


9 years, 2 persons, 1 door

by Imphiknight (cuddlesEnsue)



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom, Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Codes & Ciphers, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Scheming, Survivor Guilt, even though she's not dead, vague aoi/light, weird and unsettling dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-12 15:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5671615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlesEnsue/pseuds/Imphiknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How far would you go to save the life of someone you love?<br/>This is the question Aoi faces, when to ensure the survivial of his younger sister, he must commit kidnapping and murder.</p><p>What happened in the nine years between the first and second Nonary Games?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 0 years, 0 months, 0 days

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Nanowrimo 2015.

 

It was over, I thought in relief. And my sister was alive. Akane had made it, somehow figuring out a way to escape in the final moments before the incinerator burned her to death.

I could hardly bear to the think about what could have happened. I could hardly believe that she had got out, and was here now, clinging to me, almost as tightly as I was to her, as the small lifeboat full of the other children and the giant of a man who had come to save them drifted away from the wreckage.

I didn't dare let go, in fear she would disappear before my eyes.

“You're OK,” I muttered, half to myself. “I'll never let you out of my sight again.”

“I am. He saved me” she whispered back.

I pulled back. “Saved you?” I asked, firmly clasping her shoulders, and staring into her eyes. “Who?” I added sharply.

There had been no one else there. She had been dragged into the room by the maniac who'd kidnapped us all, and abandoned as he left through the far door and we had stood there, as I had stood there, unable to help my baby sister.

She paused before answering, as if predicting my response. “Jumpy. He saved me.”

Her voice was soft, but warm. I knew who 'Jumpy', or rather Junpei, was, by name at least, as I had never had the honour of meeting Akane's dearest friend from the school she had just left.

“Junpei,” I growled, rather more threateningly than I had intended, but unable to prevent the tide of anger the name invoked considering just how Akane had got herself thrown in the incinerator. “If it weren't for Junpei you would have never gone back for that stupid doll and gotten caught in the first place. He's the reason you needed rescuing in the first place.”

She glanced warily at the other on the boat. They were chatting amongst themselves, seemingly uninterested in our conversation. Probably as relieved as I was to escape that awful ship in one piece. Unlike me, that had yet to be reunited with their siblings, who'd been separated properly into the other test site. Someone had really screwed up. Akane had never been meant to be on the ship, and she's nearly died. It seemed there were a long list of people I was blaming for the situation, with myself as number one.

I shouldn't have let her get kidnapped. I shouldn't have let her get out of my sight when I thought freedom was so close. I should have moved stronger, faster when I realised where she was. I should have stopped it. She should never have been in there in the first place. Clearly I was an awful brother.

Akane finally seemed to come to a conclusion. “He saved me. I accessed his thoughts in the morphogenic field thingy. But… not my Jumpy. Jumpy in the future. I… we...” she shook her head. “it's complicated. Confusing. I just know… it's not over yet. We have to help him before he can have saved me. And there's a lot we need to do.”

I stared at her in confusion. I understood about the morphogenetic field. It was after all, the goal of the project we'd been kidnapped for. But the future…? Was that even possible?

She looked back at me, frowning. “He hasn't saved me yet. I know he must, because I'm here. But… if we don't help him, will I just disappear.” she looked at me, tearing up “Aoi, I'm afraid to stop existing. Please say you'll help me, so I don't have to go.”

I was helpless before her watering eyes, regardless of my confusion and disbelief. Of course I would help her. Anything to make up for the fact that I had failed her before.

I held her close. “Anything Akane. I promise.”

 

* * *

 

The sun was crawling higher into the sky as we watched the ship that had once been our prison, sink beneath the waves.

We had rowed just far enough to be safe, the giant had said, or else we might have been dragged under as water rushed to fill the gap left by the boat. Beyond that our little row-boat, with a crew of ten had not moved much for a couple of hours.

There was no sign of how our mad kidnapper had escaped, but he'd probably had a plan in place for himself. There was no way, no matter how mad, that he would have been willing to drown, despite his experiment failing. There must have been another boat, better equipped, to return to shore.

Our boat had nothing like that. A rummage around had turned up a couple of flares, and a radio, which the giant had been trying every half hour or so. We had to be patient he had said. Our best bet was to stay near the wreckage, which was more visible from above, or to passing ships, than a single boat. He didn't want to risk rowing to shore, not knowing how far from the coast we were.

The giant was sure we would be found. He seemed frustrated at the loss of a better communication device, his phone having been removed when he'd been captured himself. He'd had a contact however, who knew he'd been investigating at the docks, and who would be sure to raise the alarm when he didn't check in. He had shared his story, explaining how he'd managed to track us down.

I'm sure at any other time it would have been more exciting to hear, the adventures of a lone wolf detective hot on the heels of kidnappers. Instead it was merely a mild distraction from the agony of waiting.

Akane wanted to tell me more. I knew as I sat with one arm around her, watching the sky for signs of rescue. But she was not going to tell me, not yet. She was still busy trying to figure things out for herself, and was scribbling away besides me in a small notebook, which she'd held on to from the room she'd awoken in earlier. I hadn't been able to make out much, aside from a list of names and numbers, which included both our own.

Suddenly, as if remembering something, she flipped back to that page and looked at the giant, who had just concluded his tale.

“What's his name?” she asked me in whisper. I wondered why she didn't ask him herself, she wasn't normally shy, but I assumed she had a reason.

Either he'd introduced himself, and I'd missed it, paying more attention to Akane, or the subject hadn't come up yet.

I repeated the question, drawing attention to our little corner of the boat for the first time in a while.

The giant looked at us, confusion crossing his face for a few moments as he did so. “Shichiro Yamamoto.” He said eventually. “Who're you? The rest I know from the reports… but you I don't recognise.”

Besides me, Akane ignored the question, choosing instead to note down the detective's name.

“Aoi Kurashiki. And my sister's Akane. We… we wouldn't have been reported. There was no one who'd have noticed us missing.” I said eventually, barely daring to make eye contact at the look of pity I knew was forthcoming. It never came.

“Tough breaks kid” he said. “You ever need anything, you can look me up any time, but you're strong and brave, so I don't doubt that won't be often.” He then turned to address the boat at large. “My story's missing quite a bit of info here kids. Who's gonna fill me in on what happened after you were kidnapped?”

The rest of the boat eagerly began to tell him our story. I didn't join in, choosing to return my attention to my sister, choosing not to dwell on his assessment of me. Not strong enough or brave enough to make a difference. But she was still here despite that, and I would make damn sure it stayed that way.

 

* * *

 

It was about an hour later when he finally was able to radio a passing ship, who were able to call back to shore and send someone to pick us up.

Yamamoto passed on the information about the other half of our number being in the Nevada desert, to the American police, who immediately dispatched a team to locate and secure the site. It would take a while. Not that it would affect me… unlike the rest of the kidnappees, I already had my sister back. 

When we were picked up, we were immediately bundled into life jackets and foil blankets, and given a through once over by some sort of medic on the rescue ship, before being allowed to sit down, and eat something.

We were all ravenous- we'd been on the ship for a long time, and now the stress and the danger were long gone, we were able to think about food, and other things. Akane and I we able to find a more private corner of the ship to talk.

“I don't know exactly how it happened… but in the future, those involved did not remember me as living. When asked, they remembered a girl dying in the incinerator. In order to try to preserve the future as I saw it, I need to be unmemorable. And we need to get away from these people as soon as we can Aoi. If I want the future where I am saved to be possible.”

“OK… you need to back up a few steps, and give me more details here. How are you saved, and who, other than your goof-ball friend Junpei, is involved?”

She took a deep breath. “You aren't gonna like it Aoi. Some of the stuff we are going to do if we want me to live… It isn't very nice.”

“I don't care about nice,”I said sharply, “I care about YOU. You are my number one priority. I don't care what I have to do, I'll do anything, I already said that, so long as YOU are OK Akane.”

She nodded, and gripped my hand tighter. “In nine years there will be another Nonary game. This time, it is set up by us, you and me, for one purpose, saving the me of today. It has to be as similar as possible to the game we took part in today, so that I can form the connection I did with Jumpy. Like today, there will be nine people participating. You, me and Junpei. The detective. Light and his sister. And… I think, Nona's mother?”

“That makes seven people Akane, not nine” I said, sure she was hiding something. Sure enough she averted her eyes before continuing.

“I don't know the names of the other two men,” she said. “one of them called himself Ace… everyone was using code names you see.”

She was definitely hiding something. The way her voice waved as she said 'Ace' told me she knew for sure who it was, and she didn't like it. I, deciding she'd been through enough trauma today, kindly chose not to push the issue.

“I was in tune with him the whole time we were on the ship. It's why I seemed a bit distant.” She looked back at me, finally seeming to settle into honesty “I know you were worried about that. I could see and feel everything he did at the same time as what I was seeing and feeling. And they had a worse time than us. I think trust and teamwork come easier to children than adults. But now we, and him in the future, are safe… we won't sync up again.”

She seemed a little regretful of this last fact. “You miss him don't you.”

She nodded.

“I'm sorry I told you off for going back for the doll. I still think it was a bad idea, but I understand why you did it.”

“I won't see him again until then, nine years from now. That's a long time… but when we had to move back in June, I thought I would never see him again… so it's not so bad. Something to look forward to.”

I sighed, “I'm sorry we had to move. There was no way we could afford to keep attending that school though.”

“It's not your fault,” she said, “really Aoi, I need you to believe that. None of this is your fault.”

It was my turn to look away. She might believe it, but I never could.

“Besides… That doesn't matter now. We can't even go back to Japan.”

“What!?” I hissed sharply.

“We have to stay here, and begin working on our Nonary Project. If we go back with everyone else, we'll be in the papers, and no one will ever believe I died. We need information from the detective about our captors, and then we won't see any of these people again for nine years.”

“Why do we need information about them? Surely when he hands over his report they'll be arrested and we won't have to worry about them again.”

“Sorry Aoi, not in the future I saw. It didn't seem like they'd suffered any repercussions at all,” she said regretfully.

I spent a moment wondering how on earth someone could get away with kidnapping 18 children, having a detective track them down and through identifying the kidnappers, locating the abductees successfully. When the answer came to me, I was appalled. Money, it seemed, could do anything, especially in the hands of someone who had no cares for the consequences.

“Do you remember when we visited the hospital last year,” Akane said, seemingly out of nowhere. “They said they were doing a survey on the general health of young people on Japan, but did all those weird tests which didn't seem health related at all.”

I did remember, though the whole thing had seemed a bit silly at the time, they had been willing to compensate us for our time, and a little extra cash before Christmas had seemed a good idea. They had put us in different rooms and made us look at pictures on computer screens, and to try to communicate to each other what we saw. Reflecting on it now, I could tell why Akane had brought it up.

“They were trying to identify people who could use the morphogenetic field. They were the one's who kidnapped us?” She nodded. I remembered the detective saying something about a hospital. “That’s how Yamamoto tracked us down. He'll definitely know who kidnapped us.”

I spent a few moments considering this issue. I couldn't remember who'd been doing the survey, just that they were some sort of recently established medical company, making drugs and stuff. I pictured the detective who'd rescued us, trawling through mounds of hospital files to find the information he needed. He really didn't seem the type, but I guess appearances can be deceiving.

“I wonder if they detective can help us with other things. Like if we need to disappear and start anew in America, do you think he might be able to help us out? He's gotta know someone who can help us get fake IDs, that's the sort contact PIs have.”

“Maybe in movies, and on TV” she reprimanded, “I don't think real life works quite the same way.”

“Can't hurt to ask him… unless...” I considered what she's told me already. “Future him thinks you're dead right? Is that something you know for definite, or might he have been lying.”

“He seemed pretty broken up about it… but if we keep our contact minimal, and you do the talking, it might work. Still, the sooner we get away from these people the better.”

 

* * *

 

We had spent a little longer discussing how to approach the detective for this favour, but in the end it went pretty smoothly. He seemed pretty understanding of us not wanting to return to Japan, not that we gave him our real reason. Instead we told him that there were just too many bad memories back home, playing up the pitiful little orphans front.

He gave us the name of a man, in a similar line of work, who owed him a favour. They had been colleagues, many years earlier, before the giant had become a PI, and his contact had emigrated. This man, he said, should be able to sort us out with new identities, and find us somewhere to live, assuming we didn't want to go into the foster system with fuzzily backgrounded IDs.

We didn't manage to ditch the rest of our crew-mates as early as we'd hoped. It turned out Seven's contact was based in Las Vegas, and since the local police had made travel arrangements to get our groups to meet up with the other half in Nevada, it was much easier to go along with that, than attempt to make our own way with no funds.

Akane and I took seats at the back, out of as many people's line of sight as possible. I was pretty sure she was dozing as she leaned on my shoulder, and I looked around us.

The detective had already gone, back to Japan to deal with the press, and to reassure families of our imminent return. We were in the hands of the Americans for now, and I could tell Akane was feeling less pressure with one less pair of eyes she felt the need to hide from.

I let my own eyes settle on the other individual she felt the need to be wary of. Light Field. Though of course, she didn't need to worry about being seen and acknowledged by him, she was still keeping her distance. He had proven to have keen ears, and a keener mind while we'd been trapped together. He was sitting several rows forward of us, holding the single four-leaf clover he'd kept for himself in his hands, slowly and gently turning the stem, obviously deep in thought. I hoped his sister was OK.

He was the same age as me, and together we were the two oldest candidates who had been selected for the Nonary Game. During the trials we'd been through on the ship, he had kept us all as calm as possible considering the lingering threat of death, reminding the others that their siblings were trying to help, even as I worried over Akane. I will admit, I was a bit envious of him, as I had been nowhere near as collected even with my sibling within arm's reach. Even so, I had tried to imitate his rational mindedness, especially at the end...

… in the incinerator. It had been an easy decision for the two of us, when the detective had appeared, and I think I had even spoken first. We had encouraged the five younger children to leave through the final door without us, believing we would be saved. I almost wondered what could have happened if I’d made Akane leave with the others, holding back one of the five we'd sent away. Things would be different now. It might have been someone else's sibling, one without a bizarre future saviour, who died in the incinerator. I shivered at the thought, causing Akane to shift in her sleep.

I held my breath, waiting for her to settle, keeping a fixed gaze in front of me. Apparently I was too late.

“You like him, don't you?” she mumbled sleepily, having registered the direction of my gaze.

I hesitated. I wasn't normally one to keep my private thoughts and feelings secret from my sister, but this was hardly a normal situation.

“I think he's a good brother, and a good team mate, and I respect that,” I whispered, slightly paranoid at the thought that he might overhear me.

“No… I mean _like_ , like him” she repeated in a subdued, but sing song manner. I promptly turned scarlet, and she giggled. “You're too easy Aoi.”

I was pleased she was laughing, finally seeming to have shaken off the cloud of lingering dread from earlier, so I held my tongue instead of chiding her.

“It's not like we're gonna see him again. Well… not for nine years at least, if everything goes according to your plan.”


	2. 0 years, 1 week

It was less than a week later, when I awoke for the first time without feeling totally lost and confused about our futures.

We had spent the past few days in flux, since covertly sneaking away from the rest of our group. And by sneaking away, I meant pretending to someone vaguely in charge (but mostly distracted) that we had been picked up by a local relative, then fleeing the building before a) he realised he hadn't seen said person, and b) remembered there was some sort of paperwork to complete before we were allowed to leave. I did feel kinda sorry for that guy if he didn't manage to cover up our vanishing, but then, since we'd never been reported missing, I supposed there was little enough paper work to say we were even there in the first place.

We didn't say goodbye to anyone, and we didn't wait for the other siblings to be reunited. We just left, heading out into Vegas to find Yamamoto's contact, with nothing but the clothes on our backs to our names. There was, I supposed, little to lose, though I was still keen to find somewhere to stay soon enough. I didn't want my baby sister sleeping on the street.

Luckily between the pair of us, we had a pretty good grasp of English, having studied it in school, though we were lacking practice on native English speakers. We were able to navigate the city, having found our way to a tourist office after asking for directions, where we were able to look up business address of the man who’s name we'd been given. The woman behind the counter had mostly seemed bored as we asked her where to find the information, and we didn't need to invent a reason for needing it.

So here we were, a few short days later, with a roof over our heads, and a plan in mine.

The detective's old friend hadn't been able to put us up himself, but had a friend of his own who had owed him a favour, an older woman, whose son was currently out of the country doing something with the military. Her name was Margaret Moore, and she was more than happy to let us stay in his old room, and feed us, and had even dragged us along to a few charity shops so we could expand our wardrobe past the clothes we'd been kidnapped in. All we had to do in return was to pull our weight and help with chores around the house. She said she missed being a mother now her children had moved on, and it would be a few years before she would feel the joys of being a grandparent. That may have been the case for her, but to me it felt like charity, and I wasn't terribly happy about putting myself in debt to a stranger.

Thus the plan. We needed money: firstly to pay back this debt we were building, secondly to become independent and not need the help, and thirdly so we could begin work on sorting out the future Akane had seen.

Akane told me we wouldn't have to worry about money for long. Having gone over her memories of the futures she had seen, she had come up with an almost foolproof way to make enough money to fund her Nonary project. She wanted us to buy stocks in Cradle Pharmaceuticals, which she knew was on the verge of making huge profits, and growing massively in value over the next few years. It was a great idea, and I couldn't even begin to put into words how pleased I was that we were going to be making money off of the villains who had experimented on us. It seemed sort of karmic. Of course I might have been happier still if she'd foreseen them all getting their comeuppance for that particular deed, but I would have to be content with the cards the future was going to deal us.

But the problem with making money on the stock market, was that we needed money in order to be able to buy stocks in the first place. So _my_ plan would make us the money we needed for all the above reasons. That was the _good_ thing about my plan.

The downside of my plan? Well… at the moment I wasn't entirely sure it would work. And even if it did, I wasn't sure how profitable it would be. But it was the best I could come up with for the time being… we were currently in no position to make money legally, as we were waiting on arranging new IDs, and very few places would hire and pay cash to a minor. It also seemed a bit like extortion in my head. Even if it wasn't exactly illegal, it didn't seem to be in the spirit of the law.

What was my plan? It was to use our ability to access the morphogenetic field, to take advantage of the greed of unwary Vegas tourists. We wouldn't be able to enter casinos to do so, but there were plenty of people about on the streets to profit from.

 

* * *

 

It took considerably less persuasion than I had first thought to bring Akane round to the idea of using a slightly less than legal method to make money. In fact she seemed to jump immediately on board with the idea. Especially when I explained how we would not be caught, we had the best way of cheating available to us. In fact, she was so on board with the idea, that she immediately went off and retrieved a pack of cards she'd seen in a drawer to help us practise.

We had picked up a few things about morphogenetic field theory between being kidnapped, and being holed up in a room on a boat and they were as follows:

Some people are really good at absorbing ideas in the field, they are great at picking up on trends and memes, answering questions that have been solved a hundred times by others before them, even if the question is new to them. These people are 'receivers'. According to the findings in the initial experiments we'd been through, I was a receiver.

Some people are much better than others are submitting ideas to the field. These people are trend-setters, they are far more likely to have others pick up on what they are thinking or feeling, even without having contact with them, even if they are on the other side of the world. These people are know as 'transmitters'. Akane was a transmitter. Or at least, this is what Cradle had said. How this tied into her contact with Junpei, where she had seemingly been receiving from him, as well as being able to form both sorts of connection simultaneously, I'm not sure… perhaps she had the ability in a different way to the research? Perhaps it was Junpei that was special? Perhaps it had something to do with communicating through time. I wasn't going to waste time on meaningless speculation. There was no way to find out right now, so we would work with our best assumptions.

Thirdly if you could find a pair of people (transmitter and receiver), who had a strong emotional connection (such as a pair of siblings), the emotional bond would mean they were significantly better at communicating messages through the field, compared with ordinary people. Of course, the messages could only be sent one way, from the transmitter to the receiver. Which meant Akane could transmit things to me, but I would be unable to communicate back. We couldn't form the same sort of connection she had formed with Junpei, no matter how hard we tried, and I certainly wasn't going to put the pair of us in a life-threatening situation just to make accessing the field easier.

 

In terms of cheating the tourists of Las Vegas out of their too carelessly spent money, the plan was simple. We would set ourselves up in a busy area of town during the day, and take advantage of people coming in and out of the casinos with the promise of an easy win. Almost every tourist in Vegas would be vulnerable. And we were the perfect pair to profit from them. Because of our age, most people would think us naive, and be more concerned about taking advantage of us, than of the inverse. 

And on the matter of age… well there would be deception there too. We wanted to advertise our act as being an amazing display of twin telepathy, which sounds much better than just being mind-reading siblings. It would attract cynics, who would want to disprove us, as well as those more inclined to believe in the paranormal. In order to pull this off, I had to make myself look younger than I was, as well as aiming to make Akane seem a little older.

To be honest pulling that off was the easy part- it just meant hunching down in clothes that were a little too big, and not styling my hair, and dressing Akane in clothes a little more mature, and styling her hair in a more mature fashion. Together we could probably pass as 13 year old twins.

The game was simple... in theory. We would attract over a hapless tourist or two with the promise of showing off our telepathy… for a small stake of maybe $10 either way. We would invite the tourist to write or draw, or even act out a message of some description for Akane's eyes only, which I would then replicate. On proving our telepathy to the tourist, we would pocket the money, and smugly refuse to explain how we did it. If we managed to attract an audience, we hoped this would encourage more people to stake money on the act, to figure it out and outsmart us.

The real trick would be getting hold of people willing to bet on the act, and to keep our cool in front of an audience. Although as Akane had pointed out, feeling on edge and maybe even a little threatened by being on display, would probably improve our morphogenetic resonance.

I've always prided myself on being a pretty fast talker, and a pretty good actor, so we should be fine. I was going to give us a week to practice, and then we would hit the streets of Vegas.

We had come up with this whole plan during our first two days staying with Mrs. Moore, and I really hoped it was going to work.

 

* * *

 

On our third night since moving in, I woke up at five in a blind panic, tears streaming down my face, sure my shouts had roused the entire city.

I couldn't stop shaking, unable to make myself stand or reach for a light, too petrified to move.

Suddenly, the light turned on and a warm body settled on the bed behind me, eyes alight with worry and confusion.

I stared at her like she was a ghost. _Surely_ she was a ghost. After all I’d just watched her die.

 

_The flashing lights. The echoing voice warning about imminent incineration. The cold metal beneath my fists as I thumped helplessly on the door, as the cool metal seemed to slowly warm as the intense bouts of flame gushed into the room beyond._

_And then… and then there was silence._

_The frustrated forms of those beside me were barely acknowledged as the door slid open_ _and a wave of baked air flowed over us._ _I stepped_ _through the opening,_ _to see…._

_To see…_

…

_Through a veil of tears I saw the small mound of ash in the centre of the room, and stepped closer, not really registering what it was, my head echoing quiet, before the reality rushed back._

_I collapsed to the floor screaming her name, until I screamed so hard I blacked out._

 

 

Surely she was dead. Her hand reaching for mine seemed to flicker for a moment, before it grasped mine more firmly.

Alive.

She was alive.

I forced myself to recall the true version of events. She had escaped. She had not burned to death. The warm skin in my hand reassured me of this, more than my eyes alone could.

She looked scared. I had scared her.

I forced myself to take a deep breath, and then another, rubbing at my face with my free hand, trying to hide the evidence of the intense emotions I had experienced.

Akane had never seen me cry before. No wonder she was scared, and worried about me. I was her big brother. I was supposed to be invulnerable. I was not supposed to break down sobbing and shaking, just because of a nightmare.

Just a nightmare, I told myself.

“Just a nightmare,” I told Akane. “I'm sorry I woke you.”

She looked sceptical, and refused to let go of my hand. “I'm not sorry. If it was that bad, I'm more than happy to be here for you. You don't have to always be the one doing the protecting. I'm more than capable of helping you on occasion.”

I didn't want to tell her how grateful I was for her presence. Without her, the haunting images within the dream would have clung on, refusing to let go, hovering like a spectre above my thoughts, until I could verify their lack of truth. The sight of Akane had broken their grip.

I wasn't happy about Akane feeling the need to protect me, and I swore to myself that her need to do so would have to fade away. I would have to ensure nothing else happened to make her need to do so. I thought this in my head of course, I wasn't going to say it. Akane was nearly as stubborn as I was.

“OK… but not too often.” I finally settled on. “Why don't you head back to bed? I'm going to go... wash my face, before I go back to sleep.”

I hoisted myself out of bed, forcing her to stand, and headed out the door, not giving her time to protest the idea. In truth I did not know that I would be able to sleep. Luckily it was creeping slowly towards dawn, so even if I didn't, she wouldn't notice my tiredness the next day.

 


	3. Chapter 3: 0 years, 1-2 months.

The next day went smoothly enough. We were getting really good at transmitting and receiving using the morphogenetic field, and it was enough to make me wonder why we'd never used the ability before. Well… other than not having been aware it was a skill we possessed. It would have been dead useful. I bet it could have been used for all sorts of things. Cheating on tests at school was the first idea I had. If I had got really good at receiving from Akane, I could have used it to check up on what she was doing when we weren't together. Maybe then I'd have had a better idea of who Junpei was, and whether he was a trustworthy friend, and not leading her astray. I didn't share that particular train of thought with Akane.

Over the next week we played around a lot more with the cards we'd first practised with, and with other visual messages scribbled on paper, trying to send the images from different rooms. We also toyed about with doing other things. Akane hit upon the idea of blindfolding me,  and attempting to transmit her view of me so I could navigate around obstacles in the room.

Needless to say this was a lot harder than the cards and drawings, as the images I needed to receive were more complicated. I fell over a lot. However… this could be a good trick. It was definitely something we could use to extend our performance, bringing in a greater visual element. It just needed perfecting.

Akane thought it was hilarious. I'm not sure if it was even possible, but as the week wore on, I was sure she had figured out how to add lies into the images she was transmitting, in order to make me fall over.

Despite the events that had led us to this point, I couldn't help myself enjoying the moment, the time we were spending together. I felt closer to her now than I had in years. I'd perhaps been spending too much time playing the role of a parent, concerned about money, keeping us fed, clothed and housed, and not spending enough time being her brother. I still had those concerns… but having nearly lost her I was now realising that more important to us than having things, was having each other, and the memories of being together. They would be far more precious. Now, more than ever, we only really had each other. At least for the time being.

I also managed to get through the week without another nightmare, believing that if I did the best I could to wear out my body and brain during the day, I would prevent myself from dreaming.

The night before we'd decided to attempt our first performance, I discovered that that idea didn't work.

 

* * *

 

I dreamed of the incinerator again.

This time Akane died and I stumbled into the room to see her ashes, without waking.

The me in this dream was too distraught and broken to scream. Instead I was gently towed away from her remains, unable to look away, then carried up and out of the boat in the arms of a giant, barely processing the world around me. I was set down in the lifeboat we had escaped in, and a small object was placed in my arms. I had moved enough to look at the object, and just before I’d awoken I'd registered what it was.

It was the doll. The stupid, tiny doll Akane had dropped and gone back for. When I awoke I was filled with a mix of sorrow, and anger, illogically directed at the doll.

I sat up in bed and stared at the shadows on the wall opposite. My cheeks were damp again, and I couldn't figure out which version of events was true.

I stumbled out of bed and into the hall, and across, quietly opening the door where one set of memories told me that Akane was sleeping.

I stood in the doorway, and for a moment the room looked empty. The bed unmade, mattress bare, and a scattering of half filled cardboard boxes on the floor. My heart trembled at the sight, and my hand shook where it gripped the door handle. Then I blinked heavily, and the scene resolved itself.

A softly lit room, with moonlight slipping through a gap in the curtain and across the bed illuminating the sleeping form of my sister. It was like a weight had been lifted. I stood in the doorway for several minutes, just staring at her, watching the rise and fall of her chest.

Not dead. Alive. I hadn't lost her. Not really.

I was just about able to tear myself away, without having to enter the room and touch her. But only just.

I returned to my room, and dug out the notebook and pen, that were my only mementos of being kidnapped.

'SHE'S ALIVE' I scrawled in huge letters, and taped it to the lampshade by the bed.

There, I thought, that should help. I didn't really believe it, but maybe it would stop me feeling the need to be quite so stalkery with my own sister.

 

* * *

 

 

Saturday arrived, and with it, we decided to make our first attempt at making a profit. The lady we were staying with drove us into the city proper, claiming she had errands to run, and it was no problem, really dears, if you want to see the city after being cooped up all week. She had no idea what we were doing of course.

We had a few goes at our trick, before the small number of people who'd stopped to watch got bored of the predictable nature of the spectacle and dispersed. I tried not to lose heart. I tucked half the money away safely in an inner pocket, before leading Akane towards a café that looked fairly inexpensive, and treated us to lunch. That the trick had worked, and that we'd made any money at all, was a massive success as far as I was concerned, and it deserved celebrating.

Akane seemed cheerful enough. I think she was enjoying being outside, around lots of hustle and bustle. Even just sitting in the café watching the people pass by was more interesting than staying inside all day.

In the afternoon we tried again, in a couple of other locations, to more or less the same result. Our final appointment of the day was back with the detective's old friend. We met at his apartment, for what he warned us, had better be the final time, to hand us the Ids he'd arranged for us, along with a list of warning about what we could and could not use them for. Everyday stuff, like banking and insurance, they would be fine. International travel would be more iffy. Things like voting, driving and drinking didn't apply to us yet, though he assured me, the ID would be pretty sound for that sort of thing.

The IDs declared our new names to be Chris and Summer Kurosawa, and we were the children of an American woman and a Japanese businessman who had been living in the states, both recently deceased.

I was pleased to see the details of the ID, in particular that he'd changed my date of birth, so my ID claimed I was a year older than I actually was. Which only upped my age to 16, but it gave me the legal right to do a sizable handful more things. He helpfully informed me that school leaving age in Nevada was 18, so if I didn't want to set off alarm bells I should either register Akane and I at a school, or keep a low profile during the week. I promised to consider this, but in truth I did not plan to return to school myself.

He also gave me some pointers on how to apply for legal emancipation, which would allow us to avoid the foster care system in the US, but before I could do so, I would have to prove myself capable of supporting myself financially. And that income would have to be legally aquired method, complete with a bank record, in order for it to be counted as sufficient evidence. It would probably be a while at least before I was able to get into a situation where that was feasible. But setting up a bank account was probably a good idea. Carrying around cash in a city like Las Vegas made me feel insecure, in the way that carrying round a rectangle of plastic would not.  Being able to regularly deposit cash in a secure location would give us a little more security to establish our new identities, which would surely benefit us in the future.

I decided, considering how it late it was now in the day, the bank would be my first stop tomorrow. I had been assured I should be able to set up an account at 16 without a parent or guardian present, despite the local law officially stating 18, though I might have to try a couple of different banks to find one that would.

Akane was beginning to flag from tiredness, as it had been a long day. I decided to call a taxi to take us back to our temporary residence. We had a small bite to eat, and went to bed early, after I'd put half of our remaining cash in the purse of our caretaker, in the hopes that she wouldn't call attention to it. It didn't even begin to cover the debt we owed her for taking us in, but it helped ease the feeling. I slept very well that night.

 

* * *

 

Our first month living in Las Vegas seemed to slip past very quickly. I'd managed to get the bank account set up, and was able to deposit cash into on a regular basis, as we'd found a rhythm to our money making scheme. Saturday and Sunday were days exclusively set aside for profiting from tourists. We had picked up a lot of ideas from watching other street games and magicians at work. As a result our own schemes and skills as con artists had evolved, and our tricks began to net us more money

Half our money was being set aside in a savings account, and the other half was just about covering what I'd deemed our living expenses. This included rent, bill and food payments to the lady who's house we were staying in, as well as a modest budget to expand our wardrobes, and acquire a couple of luxury items.

The most significant of these items was a smart phone. Being able to get back online finally was great, as it made research, and navigating the city, so much easier.

The second thing, was something I was trying to keep secret from Akane until Christmas. I had tried to get her to write a letter to Santa, as she had done every year as long as I could remember. It was my tradition to peek at the letter, and arrange for her to get what she'd asked for. This hadn't worked this year. Instead, when I suggested she sit down to write it, she smiled and hugged me.

“I don't need to write a letter to tell Santa what I want. I already have him here and he is giving me just what I want just by being here.”

It was a little awkward knowing she'd heard my secret from my own mouth, in her visions of the future.

I was determined to give her something to make her happier anyway.

She was careful not to let on, but I could tell the isolation during the weekdays was wearing on her far more than it was me. She had always been the more social of the pair of us. And so for Christmas, I had arranged for her to join the local school.

I'd managed most of this online, though one afternoon, in the guise of visiting the bank, I'd had to drop by the school to sign paperwork. The school had the impression we were living with an aunt, who had a disability and couldn't get out of the house much, and that I was her main carer. They also had been led to believe that we had been home-schooled, and that I would remain so, but my younger sister wanted a proper school experience. I would continue my home-schooling, but would like to register to take exams at the school in the future.

The school had accepted my lies, and our identities without any problems, and I'd been able to buy and wrap what Akane needed to begin there in January without arousing suspicion. I couldn't wait for her to find out.

Her being at school would give me the chance to focus on other things during the day. I needed to learn how the stock market worked. It was all very well just simply knowing that one company was going to see a huge increase in value over the upcoming years, but there was more to it than that. If I wanted to make a significant profit it would require knowing when to buy and sell, and across multiple fields of investment. I needed to study finance to learn how to predict trends, so I'd signed myself up to an e-learning course, and found a stock simulation site to learn from before I began investing real money. I was hoping that being able to receive from the morphogenetic field might combine with my own research to make my awareness of financial trends keener.

On top of the scamming of tourists, I'd also been able to make a little money in a more legal fashion, by doing odd jobs around the neighbourhood. It seemed Mrs Moore had been unable to avoid talking about us with neighbours. Even though we'd been keeping a low profile in the week, they were still aware of our existence, having seen us coming and going during weekends.

She had managed to avoid giving away what little truth she knew about us, and instead had claimed we were distant relatives who'd come to stay while our own parents were unable to care for us for some reason that 'oh, I’m sorry, they wouldn't want me talking about'.

Apparently she'd been wanting for someone to help around the house until we'd arrived, as she'd also shared how useful it was to have helping hands around again. Several neighbours had requested my help with odd things like helping redecorate, putting up Christmas lights, or running errands that required heavy lifting, and since they'd offered money in return, I was happy to help.

I was somewhat suspicious that we'd suddenly started getting these offers, and I guessed that she had been encouraging others to help us out by offering these tasks. Perhaps she had been concerned about where the money we'd been giving her thus far was coming from, and since she had been unable to talk us out of financial re-compensation for taking care of us, she'd at least make sure the money she was taking from us had been earned legally. Very sensible of her really.

 

* * *

 

Christmas approached quickly, but not very discretely. Christmas in America was even more commercialised than it was at the moment in Japan, and it was impossible to avoid reminders of the upcoming date for more than a few moments while out and about. Despite Christmas falling on a Tuesday, it seemed no-one worked on the day itself, including our landlady, and schools had also broken up over the festive period. Having helped half the street put up a ridiculous amount of Christmas lights, I could barely believe the extravagance everyone went to for just one day.

And yet… on Christmas morning I still woke up surprised. Unbeknownst to me, Akane had schemed with Mrs Moore to ensure our first Christmas in America would one to remember.

I was greeted by an exuberant Akane jumping onto my bed first thing, and dropping a lovingly wrapped package on my chest. I opened it to uncover the result of Akane's own secret project. It was a scarf, a little misshapen in places, but in a deep beautiful blue. She'd knitted it herself, to replace the one I'd thrown away weeks ago, not wanting anything to remind me further of the traumatic experience we'd been through. I was unbelievably touched, and had to sit hugging her for several minutes before I could manage enough speech to thank her.

I was planning to give her her own present later in the day, so we went down to breakfast to discover Mrs Moore already hard at work preparing a Christmas lunch. Akane immediately jumped in to help, and I did what I could from the sidelines, not wanting to get in the way in the tiny kitchen.

I discovered a tiny tree had been set up in the dining room, and there were a couple of small packages addressed to the pair of us there. I immediately felt guilty, as the idea of getting Mrs Moore a gift hadn't even occurred to me. All the same, I retrieved Akane's gift bundle and added it to the pile beneath the tree. It looked nice, I thought, as it reminded me of the times with my own family many years ago, before our parents had died. Akane was too young to remember what a family Christmas was like, so I was glad she would have some semblance of it today.

We ate dinner, then settled down in front of the tree, and exchanged the presents we had. Akane received a small necklace, as Mrs Moore declared that all young ladies should own at least one piece of jewellery. For myself she had bought a watch, with a nagging reminded that I should try not to stay out so late, as she worried about us, despite not being our parent.

I apologised for not having got her gift ourselves, but she stopped me before I could even get the sentence out. Instead she thanked us for being here, meaning she wouldn't be alone this Christmas, with her son overseas and her husband passed away. She claimed it was the best gift she could have received, and I was a little speechless by her gratitude. I was still determined that I would get her something simple, but nice in return during the week.

Perhaps we would stay here a little longer than we needed to. Her son wasn't due back from his first deployment until September, so there was no pressure on us. And he might not even want to move back in then. There was plenty of time to think about it, I didn't need to make the decision yet.

Akane was, needless to say, delighted with her gift. I may have been anxious about letting her out of my sight for hours at a time, but I knew attempting to keep her in a bubble away from the outside world would do more harm than good. What was the point of her being alive, if she didn't get the chance to live her life freely.

After Akane and I had finished doing the dishes, we spent the afternoon relaxing, too full to do anything more energetic. I showed Akane the website and prospectus for the school I'd picked, and she read both with enthusiasm as we discussed differences between schools in Japan and America. Most of what we collectively knew about school over here we had learnt from American movies and TV, so I was willing to bet a lot of it was wrong. She seemed pleased with the lack of a uniform. At the age of thirteen she was going to be entering 'eighth grade' the equivalent to the second grade of junior high back home. This was in reality a year ahead of where she was supposed to be, but we had both had our ages increased on our IDs, though her birth date had been moved a mere six months.

I guessed it would be a lot different to what she was used to but she was brilliant at adapting to change and I knew she would enjoy the challenge. It would definitely serve to improve her English; hers was still a lot more shaky than mine since she'd been studying it for as long back in Japan.

Term would start on January 2nd . A Tuesday. Before then we'd been invited to watch the big New Years Eve fireworks display in the city, which was apparently something that we absolutely should not miss. I expected that being a city of as much lights and sparkle as Vegas was, Mrs Moore was probably correct in this.

 

* * *

 

The following week passed quickly, with Akane reading up on what she's missed of the year so far, and me quizzing her, to help her focus. We went out for a couple of hours on three days between Christmas and New Years, to boost our income a little before she started school, and we would have less opportunities to do so. I wanted to ensure she prioritised school work. We had saved up a fair amount by this point, and it would be another month or so before I dared taking on the real stock market.

Having looked online for recommendations, I had managed to pick up some books from a few second-hand stores where they'd been gathering dust.  I was now spending my time in the evenings studying them as Akane did the same with her school work.

To be honest… I was really looking forward to investing in the stock market. Knowing we would have one safe investment was fine, but the more I read, the more interested I became in using the stock market to rapidly boost our funds. It was just the sort of thing I enjoyed, researching and using up to the minute knowledge, and research of past patterns to make predictions, and to figure out when to buy and when to sell. After discussing it with Akane, we agreed that half our initial investments would go into Cradle Pharmaceuticals, twenty percent would remain to cover day to day living expenses. This would give me thirty percent to play around with. When I finally decided I was ready.

On top of grilling Akane on the details about Cradle, I had also tried to get the most information about the world of the future as possible, getting her to draw out for me logos and other things she'd seen on people clothes. She was baffled by this at first, but I explained that any knowledge, such as fashion brands that would become a success, could be a route to making a profit. Unfortunately, she, and/or future Junpei didn't really have an eye for such things, and there wasn't much she could pass on.

We ended up watching the New Year fireworks from the roof of a hotel, whose manager Mrs Moore was friendly with. They were as spectacular as promised, and created a happy memory that I was sure to look back on in the year to come.

 

* * *

 

School started for Akane on the second of January. She seemed to settle in fine, and if there were any problems, she didn't tell me.

Perhaps it was worry about her getting on alright, or merely anxiety from having her out of my sight for such a large portion of the day. Whatever the reason, this new start in Akane's life had brought back the nightmares I thought I'd managed to excise months ago.


	4. 0 years, 3-6 months.

 

The nightmares started out the same way each time. Reliving the moment where Akane left my life forever. But they didn't end there. It seemed my psyche was determined for me to see what would happen next, or rather, what _could_ have happened next.

 

_Rain lashed down heavily as our plane touched down on Japanese soil. I'd returned home. Whatever that word meant, without the one person who was home to me. I hadn't known what else to do. Without her, my life seemed to have lost all purpose, and it was as if a fog had descended within my mind, and I could not see which way to turn._

_I sat in the plane, looking down at Akane's doll resting in my lap. It was the only thing I had left of her. All around me the other kidnappees sat together in their pairs, brothers and sisters together again, and soon each would be reunited with their loving parents who had missed them, panicked and frightened by their absence._

_I had no one. That was the reality I would soon have to face. But for now I was numb. Content merely to be directed by the authority figures around me. Nothing really mattered._

 

When I woke up, the new memories I had of living in America alongside my sister made it easier to discern the difference between the dream, and my waking reality. But the deep ache the dream me had felt lingered on, and I had to make myself go and stand in Akane's doorway for several minutes to remind myself that I, at least, currently had a purpose. And not only that, I was currently succeeding.

I didn't need to feel sad, or lonely. She was here and I would make sure it stayed that way.

It was easier to forget these feelings during the day time, when we were both awake, and I could see her smiling face, hear her laughter, her life shining brightly, driving back the gloom of the thoughts that plagued me in the early hours.

 

_I felt lost in a sea of people who were blind and unfeeling as I sat, calm on the surface, but a turmoil of emotions whirling within my head. I just wanted it to be over, so I could get on with grieving in peace. Why did it take so many adults, and so much paperwork, to decide my fate._

_I felt unable to appreciate that they were trying to help. I was unworthy of help._

_My sister had died, and I had done nothing._

_Numb to the world, I was passed from person to person, place to place, until I ended up in a foster home. The place seemed rife with fake cheeriness that did nothing to lift me from my despair. I shared a room with two other boys of a similar age, but I didn't talk to them. I didn't talk to anyone._

 

The dreams were hard. I woke up feeling the despair of this alternate version of myself, and having to mentally coach myself through remembering my present situation, and that my waking reality was much better.

Sometimes the note I'd written for myself helped, and sometimes I would look at other things. A collection of photos of the pair of us, taken on my phone would often help me accept reality. On rare occasions I still needed to lurk in the entrance to Akane's room, but I would always try to keep this as a last possible resort. The last thing I needed was Akane waking up, catching me loitering, and have her start worrying about me more. She had enough to worry about with school, and new friends and homework, and all the rest of that. She didn't need to hear or know about my delusions.

And delusions they were. They were starting to bleed into my waking life, and if the circumstances weren't so unbelievable I'd have been thinking about seeing a shrink.

It was like she wasn't all there. I had lost count of the number of times in the past month I'd had to do a double take, having not seen her, or her reflection, out of the corner of my eye when she should have been there.

I wondered if there was a reason for it. If the truth of her being alive wasn't quite fact yet, because the events that would decide it were in the future… and the future hadn't happened yet. There was still a chance things could go wrong, and we would fail to set up the Nonary Game correctly so she would survive. If we didn't get everything just right, she would have died.

Maybe this state of flux she seemed to be existing in was real, or maybe it was just a trick of my mind reminding me that her existence was not yet certain, and that I couldn't slack off, or loose sight of our goal, because then we would fail.

Whichever it was, it was effective.

I almost felt my heart stop every time it happened. Every time I spent a second doubting her existence, was one where I was powerfully reminded of my goal. I must do everything I can to protect Akane.

And yet… there was a thought niggling at the back of my mind.

I was pretty sure there was something Akane wasn't telling me. Something she didn't want me to know. Maybe she thought she was protecting me from something dreadful that lay in our future.

The answer was in her notebooks, I was sure of it.

The question was… should I have faith that my sister would tell me everything I needed to know eventually, or would I have to be a bad brother and snoop through her stuff to find the answer for myself.

I would resist the temptation and put the thought out of my mind. For now at least. Maybe I would just come out and ask her. Not today. I would wait a little while.

 

* * *

 

I did not manage to resist temptation.

I'd spent a couple of hours that morning playing with the stock market simulator I had been using to learn the ropes, and was taking a break from it before lunch by helping Mrs Mooreclean the house.

I was in Akane's room. I knew where she kept her notebooks, and the drawer was ajar. I would have to shut it as part of the tidying and cleaning process. What was the harm in peeking?

Apparently there was very little harm. I think Akane suspected her notebooks might not be entirely safe. Her original notebook wasn't there, but there were a couple of new ones that I had a peek inside. There was a lot in there. And it was all gibberish. Well... OK it probably wasn't gibberish, but it may as well have been for all the sense it made. It must have been in some sort of code.

I couldn't read a word of it. But… I would probably be able to figure out what it said. I couldn't take it away to translate. So instead I snapped a couple of quick, clear photos on my phone to take away and look at later.

Sorry Akane, I thought, I need to know what's going to happen, so that I can prepare us both the best I can.

I would figure out how she'd encoded it with the couple of pages I'd photographed. Then I could come back and have another look when I'd done so.

In the meantime… Back to cleaning.

 

* * *

 

**Interlude: Akane's notebook.**

 

JB VDLQ JB RC YJRWB VN CX MX BX, R WNNM CX BLAJY VH XARPRWJU BNC XO WXWJAH PJVN WXCNB. BX R JV ANFARCRWP RW CQRB MRJAH, SDBC NWLAHYCNM NWXDPQ CQJC JXR FXW'C KN JKUN CX ANJM RC.

QN FJWCB CX TWXF VXAN. R TWXF RC QDACB QRV CX KNURNEN CQJC R JV TNNYRWP CQN CADCQ OAXV QRV. KDC R VDBC YAXCNLC QRV. QN RB WXC ANJMH CX TWXF CQN CADCQ HNC.

R LJWWXC CNUU QRV, CQJC RW CQN ODCDAN, RO JUU PXNB FNUU, FN FRUU KN ANBYXWBRKUN OXA CQN MNJCQ XO CQANN YNXYUN, VXWBCNAB CQXDPQ CQNH JAN. R LJWWXC BJH CQJC RO JUU MXNB WXC PX FNUU, VXAN YNXYUN, RWWXLNWCB NENW, FRUU MRN.

R LJWWXC CNUU QRV CQJC RO CQN FAXWP LQXRLNB JAN VJMN, QN FRUU NWM DY RW J CRVNURWN FQNAN R MRBJYYNJA OAXV NGRBCNWLN.

QN LJWWXC TWXF CQJC JUU CQNBN CRVNURWNB NGRBC. CQN ODCDAN QJBW'C QJYYNWNM, CQN LQXRLNB QJENW'C KNNW VJMN. XWUH RW XWN ODCDAN FRUU CQN YUJW BDLLNNM, JWM RW CQN XCQNAB QN FRUU QJEN CX PX XW FRCQXDC VN.

JUU CQNBN ODCDANB JAN NZDJUUH ANJU. R BJF CQNV CQAXDPQ SDWYNR'B NHNB JWM QJEN VJMN CQN MNLRBRXW CX LJAAH XW ANPJAMUNBB. CX PREN DY, FXDUM KN CX PREN DY XW VH URON, JWM R FXDUM LNJBN CX NGRBC RWBCJWCUH.

FQRUN CQNAN JAN VJWH ODCDANB FQNAN R FRUU YNARBQ, JWM JXR FRUU KN UNOC JUXWN, CQNAN RB XWN FQNAN R JV BJENM.

R VDBC ORPQC OXA CQN ODCDAN.

JWM BX CQRB SXDAWJU. RC LXWCJRWB J ANLXAM XO CQN ODCDANB R BJF, JWM URBCB CQN CQRWPB JXR JWM R VDBC MX RW XAMNA CX PNC CQNAN. RC FRUU WXC KN NJBH, KDC R JV LXWORMNWC FN LJW MX RC. JOCNA JUU, R QJENW'C BCXYYNM NGRBCRWP HNC.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll post a hint on how to decipher this with the next chapter, but I'm sure anyone reading this appreciates a good puzzle as much as I do.


	5. 0 years, 7 months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For all your decryption needs: http://www.simonsingh.net/The_Black_Chamber/caesar.html  
> I don't think I need to be explicit in detailing the size of the shift I used :)
> 
> Trigger warning: non-graphic suicide mention in this chapter.

 

I didn't look at the photos I'd taken of Akane's notebook for weeks. Knowing she'd encrypted them as a precaution against my snooping made me feel worse about breaching her trust by looking. I tried to put them out of my mind, instead focussing on my stock market project in earnest.

After spending a couple of months playing with the simulator, reading around the subject, and building up our savings, I thought myself ready to begin.

Half our savings went into investing in Cradle Pharmaceuticals. Their current share price was very low. Backlash from their names coming out in relation to the kidnappings it seemed. Served them right. It suited us though. We knew that their share price would go up, and the cheaper we could buy at initially the more profit we would make.

Cradle hadn't suffered very much though. Their name had come out thanks to, we assumed, the detective who had come to our rescue making public the knowledge that all the kidnapped children had visited a certain hospital Cradle used for research. The Cradle bigwigs had denied everything. All blame had eventually been pinned on some minor doctor in their employ, who had claimed to be working alone. It seemed my prediction of vast amounts of bribery had indeed occurred.

The court case had dragged on for several months, and I'd been following the story as best I could. It was over now though, and it was likely from this point forward the company would regain its public standing. It was definitely the best time to invest.

Of the other half of our savings, most stayed as savings for now. I did make one investment that I was hoping would make a profit in the short term. I was watching the financial and other news surrounding the company, and I would aim to sell it at the right time. Or rather when it felt right. I wanted to see if I could read financial forecasts from the morphogenetic field.

Despite it being my first time, I felt pretty confident in my chances. After all, in nine years, eight and a half even, we'd have the money to run our own game. Including the bits that involved kidnapping and the bribery.

In this instance, I was right to be cocky, as I sold for three times what I'd paid. I promptly reinvested it to a couple more companies I'd had my eye on, and which looked likely to make a quick profit.

 

* * *

 

As well as focusing on investing, I'd also been doing my best to help Akane with school work and studying myself so I could take some exams at the end of the term. I was aiming to get some qualifications, so that finding employment legitimately would be easier.

I enjoyed helping Akane with school work. It was reminiscent of our childhood in Japan. She didn't often ask, and I wasn't able to help with everything. Next year she was looking to pick some subjects with the specific aim of aiding our Nonary endeavours. I wasn't too pleased about her dictating her entire future for just one thing, but I hadn't had much luck arguing against her. After all she was quick to point out that business and finance would hardly have been my first choice of subject to study back in Japan. And we'd been round the subject of me making sacrifices for her enough times for me to want to avoid having the same argument again. I would just have to accept that she was more than capable of making these decisions herself, and I would just have to support her when and where I could.

Akane's summer break started in May. (May!) And would last all the way to the end of August. (August!) That was three months of no school! I could hardly believe it. No wonder the American school system under performed compared with Japan. I made sure Akane was engaged in a summer study program, since we were not too strapped for cash. I had celebrated turning 16 in March (17 according to my fake ID) by applying for several part time jobs to fill my own time during 'summer break', even though I wasn't a student. I wasn't expecting much.

Defying my expectations I had eventually managed to acquire a job, working two afternoon shifts a week serving coffee at a café a short bus ride away from our temporary home. Though that was officially 'two', as I was more than willing to fill in shifts for absent colleagues, as any amount of money was useful.

Akane would occasionally tag along, when she wasn't at her summer classes, and sit with a book in a corner, or doing some work on a project or something. It was nice. It felt like something a normal set of siblings might do. Not a pair of siblings where one was in a transient state of existence, and the other was still haunted by nightmares about it.

The café was a peaceful place to work, and I made sure to spend some time talking to, and shadowing the managing staff. The more practice I could get around issues of finance now, the more experience I'd have for the future. They seemed more than happy to support me with this, and I considered myself lucky in this regard… I knew not all workplaces would have helped.

 

* * *

 

On occasion I looked at the photos I had taken of Akane's notebooks. She was still unaware I had gone looking for them, and I wanted to keep it that way.

I made my own transcribed set of notes, and looked them through trying to figure out what she'd done. It took a while, not because it was particularly hard, but because I was constantly second guessing why I was doing it in the first place.

Her encryption turned out to be a simple Caesar cipher, and once I'd figured that out, translating the whole thing was pretty easy. Well… easy to decipher. It was not easy reading. It turned out she _had_ been trying to keep secrets from me. To protect me from things she didn't want me to know yet.

I almost agreed with her there. There were definitely things in that notebook that I would have preferred not to know.

Like that to save her life, we would have to pretty much become murderers.

I know she's got it justified in her head, that since it's not us wielding the knife, per se, it's not really us responsible. But _we_ will plant the bombs inside those two men, and drug and plant a weapon by the third. The man we will call 'Ace' is merely the puppet we will put into place to pull the trigger. In truth, those three deaths will be on our heads.

I am not entirely sure how to feel about that. I don't want my baby sister dead… but I don't want to see her become a killer either. Or myself for that matter. Once we've crossed that line, gone though that door… One we make the decision to be responsible for another's death, we won't be able to go back.

In that situation… how are we different from the monsters who tried to kill Akane in the first place?

And yet… And yet. I know in my heart it is the only way to save her. So in reality, it is an easy choice. I will not let her die. I will do anything to prevent it. And since she's here alive with me now, I know that is what I will do, regardless of my other feelings on the matter.

It hardly counts as murder… because the men who planned the original experiment clearly do not have the souls to be counted as human.

…

As for the other truth contained in her notebook, I choose not to believe it. She is here alive with me now. And that is how it is going to stay. I will not let these other timelines she mentioned happen. I need to get copies of the rest of her notes, so I can find out more. I need to ensure the right future is the one that takes place. I will not let that idiot Junpei fuck it up and cause Akane to stop existing.

I will chose to believe she is wrong about all those futures being real. Because Akane will only cease to exist if we mess up. And we are not going to mess up. It is not going to happen. I won't allow it.

 

* * *

 

I think Akane knows I looked at her notebooks. She's been avoiding eye contact. Or perhaps it's just me. The guilt of knowing I broke her trust, combined with the unease I feel about the prospect of becoming a murderer is plaguing my mind. Every time I see her, I remember reading that we will be responsible for the death of at least three others. It's almost too much for me to handle. I'm pretty sure it's affecting my sleep, though it's hard to tell, because my nightmares are as persistent as ever. Worse even. Perhaps the guilt is following me even there.

Last night I dreamt of a potential other me, who couldn't handle the death of Akane, the despair and purposelessness he felt had just built to insurmountable levels, and he'd taken his own life. I'd woken with a jolt, still feeling the ghost of blood on my skin, and the aching sensation as my life faded away. It was awful. There was no way I could have gone back to sleep after that. I ended up first in the shower trying to wash the dream away, then going for a very late walk around the neighbourhood in an attempt to distract myself.

In the end the only thing that made me feel better was seeing Akane the next day at breakfast, before we both went out. Seeing her always made the dreams go away, though I felt a little weak for admitting that to myself. I needed her as much as, or perhaps at the moment, even more than she needed me.

I only had that nightmare once, though my mind went back to it often when Akane was not there to brighten my thoughts.

The other versions I saw of the dream 'me' seemed to be having a slightly easier time. Foster care was where I had ended up, now I was no longer was fighting desperately to avoid getting Akane and I embroiled in the care system. It seemed, in my dreams at least to not be as bad as I feared. Though of course, they were just dreams, and had no bearing on reality.

Many of the dream selves I saw were receiving therapy of some kind, helping to deal with the trauma of her death. I was glad for them. I never wanted to experience my own death again; even if it was only a dream it hadn't felt like one at the time. And sometimes thinking back on the therapy in my dreams helped to ease some of the guilt I felt, even living in the reality where she didn't die.

I was, however, starting to worry about how persistent these dreams were. They no longer seemed to focus on Akane's death, or near experience in my reality. At first I had assumed they were a product of the trauma of kidnapping and the subsequent events, or a subconscious expression of the guilt I felt about landing Akane in that situation. They felt like something else. They felt almost as real as the world I was in when I as awake. It was quite exhausting and I was glad I didn't have those dreams every night.

I was beginning to wonder though… maybe it was real. Maybe I was getting a glimpse of what would have happened if Junpei had failed to save her. And if we failed, maybe Akane wouldn't be the only one to stop existing, as I’d seen in her notes. Maybe I too would cease to exist as the me I am now, and the entirety of my current reality would just fade to black.

Maybe I needed to study temporal mechanics in addition to finance and business. Maybe it would help me figure out what exactly was going on. Perhaps Akane could study it with me… I'm sure she would be just as interested.


	6. One year, Zero months

The day I woke up without having had any bad dreams about alternate universes, but with a projected vision of blood on my hands of the men we would kill, was easily the worst day since we'd been kidnapped.

I had sat in bed for ages dwelling on the prospect of murder and not liking it one bit. My mind was running in circles and I couldn't get the images out of my mind. Other than Hongou (who I had no sympathy for), I didn't know what any of these men would look like, only their names. In my dreams they had friends and family left behind, grieving just as strongly as I would have if Akane had been killed.

I eventually managed to make it to breakfast, only to discover Akane had already left for school. Without her face to reassure me, I couldn't get the images from my dreams to fade and the haunted faces of the grieving families followed me as I went about the day.

I began to wonder… Did we really need to carry out this plan? Akane was here with me now. I saw her every day. It was hard to doubt the reality of her existence. We were living in the reality where she had survived… did that have to change? Was it possible to change the events that had already happened by avoiding something in the future?

The small amount of reading I'd done on the subject had been confident that cause always had to go before effect. Basic causality stated that the causes which led to an event happening had to be in the event's past. The event I was dwelling on was Akane surviving the Nonary game. The cause of her survival surely couldn't be in the future... could it?

I didn't want to doubt my sister, but neither did I want to believe her existence was uncertain. I did not want to believe the dreams I had been haunted by since November were visions of alternate realities.

It was so much easier to think that Akane had just had a moment of clarity, or inspiration, which had allowed her to escape. To think that she had got muddled by the stress of the situation and hadn't seen what she thought she had.

I felt bad for losing faith in her… but the idea that if this was true, then we wouldn't have to resort to kidnap and murder was too reassuring to pass up.

I went through the rest of the day with mixed feelings, until I got home. Home was now the new apartment we'd moved into back in September, having finally achieved some kind of financial stability and legal emancipation (which gave me the right to sign a rental agreement despite my age). We'd been sad to say goodbye to Mrs Moore, but I wanted independence.

I was expecting to find Akane waiting for me at our new apartment, but she was not there at the table where she usually sat studying after school, and there was no sign she had even arrived home yet. This was unsettling. It was out of the ordinary not to see her sitting there waiting for me, that I couldn't help but feel anxious.

Worried, I called her phone, but it went straight to voice-mail. Maybe her battery had gone flat, or she'd turned it off for some reason? I left a message, demanding she call me back when she could, and I went back out.

I retraced her route home from school, keeping an eye out in her usual haunts in case she'd decided to take a detour on her way home. It hadn't been too long since school had finished, and even though she was usually home by now it wasn't impossible that she'd got distracted and lost track of time.

There was no sign of her on the route, and I eventually arrived at the school where I tried to call her again. No answer. The school's reception was open, so I wandered in casually and asked if they knew if my sister had left, or if she was being kept behind for a detention or something.

Luckily the receptionist recognised me, and bought my story that I'd been waiting in town for her to meet me, as we supposed to be going to the cinema before going home.

She told me, a little worriedly, that 'Summer Kurosawa' hadn't made it to school today. They'd rung home to check on her, but there had been no reply. Well, obviously, I was out, and there was no one else to answer; the school didn't need to know that though.

I told them that I'd left home early this morning, and perhaps I just hadn't realised she was too sick to come in. I think she bought it. She just said she hoped my sister was well enough to make it in tomorrow, and infromed me that she would need an absence note from our guardian.

I had just nodded and left in a daze.

If she hadn't been to school then where was she?

I rushed home as fast as I could manage. I was hoping there was a sign somewhere of what she had been doing. Why hadn't she told me? She had my cell number, and the number of the place I was working today. There was no excuse for skipping school, and I definitely hadn't seen her this morning.

As I ran home, in my panic I began to wonder… is this a coincidence? That the one day I decide to question Akane's version of events is the same day that she disappears? Surely not.

I had doubted the course of actions we would have to take, and why? Simply because I was afraid to do what she felt was necessary for her survival. Why? Why had I suddenly lost faith? If doubting her had led to her disappearance, then I needed to convince myself she had spoken the truth. I needed to summon back the courage to do what needed to be done…. And then maybe, maybe she would be there when I got back.

If it meant I didn't have to fear for her existence, then I would happily plan to commit murder.

Reaching our building I ran up the stairs panting, and brimming with the determination to do what must be done to save her. I burst through the door and staggered into the apartment.

My eyes scanned the room, looking for her. There at the wall by my feet were her shoes and school bag. Had they been there when I came in earlier? I couldn't remember.

I called her name, as I uneasily made my way across the room. There was no response.

The door to her room was shut. I had thought it had been open when I'd last been here. Surely I'd glanced in and seen that she wasn't here? Was it being closed now a sign?

I slowly pushed the door open, fearing what I would see inside.

The room was dim; the curtains were pulled shut, and the only light coming from the doorway where I stood. As my eyes adjusted, I suddenly collapsed to the floor in relief at what I saw.

She was there. In the bed, covers pulled up high, so only her hair was visible, but she was there.

I crawled across the floor to her bedside, needing a closer look. I twitched the covers down slightly so I could see her face.

She was here, but she didn't look well. Her face was pale, with bright spots of red in her cheeks. Her forehead was warm and damp with sweat, in fact her whole bed seemed to be. She was feverish, and stirred slightly as I placed my hand, cool to the touch to her forehead.

“Aoi?” she mumbled groggily, her eyes flickering open.

“It's me,” I said. “What happened? Why didn't you call me? You know I would have come home to look after you.”

“I… I don't know... ” She stared at me in confusion, as if she was as unaware of what had happened to her today as I was. Perhaps she was. Perhaps she had ceased existing right up until the point I had once more become resolved to murder for her sake, and then she had simply reappeared here in bed, fever running high. Perhaps it was not an ordinary fever, but an echo of the death by incineration she'd only narrowly avoided. Perhaps believing she'd stopped existing was a sign I was going mad.

“I'm sorry,” I said, hugging her close. “I doubted you, and that was wrong. I promise it won't happen again.”

“Aoi… what?” she said faintly.

I didn't bother to explain. I didn't want to tell her she'd nearly stopped existing because of me. I didn't want her to see me as a brother who had failed her again. Instead I changed the subject.

“Come on, get up. You need some food, if you feel up to it, and to change out of your damp PJs. I'll change your sheets. You'll be feeling better in no time.”

If this course of events was my fault for doubting her, then I couldn't let it happen again. Next time I might not be so lucky as to get her back.

I wouldn't let this happened again. I would arrange for those men to die, so that Akane could live; keeping her hands as clean as possible, when it had been her plans, her visions that would lead to their deaths. I would kidnap them for her. I would plant the bombs in their bodies. I would plant the weapon at the scene of the third murder. I would become a killer. For her, and for my own peace of mind, it was worth it.


	7. Eight Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No update last week, sorry, so much for my 'I'll update on every day with a digital root of nine' plan. To make up for it: two updates this week.

**1 month.**

 

Over the past three months Akane and I had founded our own organisation. On the surface it appeared pretty harmless; we made a small profit from investing, put some of it back into 'running costs' like hiring a modest office space, and the rest of the profits were filtered to various charitable donations and enterprises in keeping with our public profile.

We had called it 'Crash Keys' which was an American bastardisation of own our surname, close enough we felt the company had our name on it, yet distant enough that it would be difficult to link it to any real 'Kurashikis'. The organisation had of course not been founded under our real names, instead under another pair of aliases, unlinked to the ones we had been living under for some time.

Through the company we'd been able to redevelop the technology in the bulk of the bracelets we'd needed for our Nonary Game (under the tenuous idea of a need for security passes and heart rate monitoring being linked) though of course the two we needed to double as detonators had been modified elsewhere. We did not need our fledging company associated with explosives.

We'd also been able to hire people to clean and restore the warehouse in the desert, though we'd kept the paper trail associated with that endeavour very lightweight, and also under the name of a dummy corporation, so we had the option of deniability later. We'd told the companies we'd hired that we'd like to use it as a venue for fund-raising endeavours, for a replica of the 'Titanic experience', but also, with it's beautiful replica of the Grand Staircase, as a place for wedding receptions or photo-shoots. Even though it was miles from anywhere, it's proximity to Vegas meant it was not so ridiculous an idea that people would want that. The fact that those features were already there suggested to most individuals that it had been used for similar purposes before.

We'd done comprehensive research before we hired out anyone for this, to ensure they wouldn't ask too many questions, and they had been paid well. Hopefully well enough to conveniently forget the weeks long task, if and when an inquiry into our Nonary Game came around.

To aid in their forgetting we were trying to get the bulk of the restoration work done nearly a full year before we planned to use the building. We had also removed a lot of the furnishings ourselves, especially those that were part of the original puzzles, to be restored elsewhere. The steel plated windows and doors had raised a lot of eyebrows, despite our desire to avoid questioning, but we'd simply said that views of the surrounding desert would remove the immersive nature of the experience, and sealed doors were simply to prevent visitors entering the areas of the replica that were unmodified. The 'immersive nature of the experience' was also the reason we gave for importing thousands of litres of sea water to the facility. It had to 'smell like you were out at sea' after all. Of course the real reason was that the players in our Nonary game were likely to notice if the water flooding into their rooms when the game started was ordinary tap water.

We had excuses prepared of every bit of oddness we were hiring people to carry out. We'd also had to hire people to erase the original numbers emblazoned on the doors- we couldn't have graffiti marring our facility. Akane and I would would repaint them ourselves, as well as replacing the original bracelet scanners with our own, at a height more suitable for nine adults than nine children.

If we could avoid our organisation being associated with the games, we could carry it on after we achieved its initial goal. I knew Akane had other things she wanted to achieve using the company, but I wanted to simply focus on ensuring she was alive first.

I was also enjoying the day to day mundanities of running a business enterprise while they lasted. Soon enough it would be over, to be replaced by stalking, abduction, and presumably, fleeing the police.

 

* * *

 

**8 years 6 months.**

 

Our purchases in Nevada were complete. We'd set up all we could in the warehouse mock up of the Gigantic. The puzzles were reset, the decorating touched up, the water damage repaired and the tanks refilled. All that remained now was to leave it be for a few months to gather dust.

We would have to do a run through of checks before we let anyone wake up in their cabins, in case something malfunctioned between now and then.

I had officially quit my cover job as 'Chris Kurosawa', and sold off almost all of my Cradle Pharmaceuticals shares. I was keeping a few in case they turned a profit in the next couple of months, but I would sell those off before we kidnapped our former kidnappers. The company's stocks wouldn't survive what we had planned after all.

Arranging the kidnappings was the last thing we had to do. We had to track down the locations of the nine people we were taking, and figure out how best to snatch them, without arousing suspicion.

It would not be easy, which is why we were moving back to Japan with six months to go.

Our list of targets read as follows:

Junpei Tenmyouji. We didn't know exactly where he was, but it was likely he would be the easiest to find. His family would likely still be living in the same place, and a letter from a childhood friend seeking to reconnect would easily get us his current whereabouts. Akane thought he would probably be at university.

Light and Clover Field. Our best bet was to take the two of them together. We thought they would still be based in Japan, but we didn't known where, so it would take some narrowing down. I had my own ideas about how we might find them, but hadn't let on to Akane just what they were yet.

Shichiro Yamamoto, the detective, could be tricky. We hoped he was still working as a private detective. When we got to Japan we were going to see if he was listed online, advertising his services, which would made finding him easy. Taking him would be harder. He was pretty big. Maybe we could arrange to hire him, and he would come to us? It would be simpler than trying to outmanoeuvre him another way.

The trickiest participant we had to find was the woman we would call Lotus, as we didn't even know her real name. She was the one person neither of us had met before, but Akane had seen her in her vision of the future, and had explained we absolutely had to have her. Without her, Junpei would be stuck in the laboratory behind door eight, unable to solve the computer puzzle. And no one would tell him about prosopagnosia, which according to Akane's convoluted timeline mapping, he just had to know. Without her, the timeline couldn't proceed as Akane had foreseen, and she would die.

I had questioned our decision to involve someone who had no relation to the original Nonary games. Akane had insisted there was a connection. She was pretty sure that Lotus was the mother of Nona and Ennea Kashiwabara, the twins who'd been among the kidnappees. There had been enough resemblance, and some comments dropped in one of the possible futures that she was confident, even if I was not. Akane had even suggested that once we found her, we should kidnap her on her way home from a dance class. I was baffled by this, but she just smiled and told me to wait and see. She loved being enigmatic, despite my frustrations about knowledge being withheld, even if it was a little ridiculous.

The last of our kidnappees were the four from Cradle Pharmaceuticals. Kagechika Musashidou I was already familiar with. He was the majority shareholder, and the only man who had had more control of shares than I'd had at my peak share ownership.

Teruaki Kubota was another guy we had already researched extensively. He'd been the technical supervisor for the project, and we'd wanted to get hold of as many of his files on the technical aspects of the project as possible. Especially the watches. Of course we'd had to make adaptations, and this was working from the bracelets left at the scene alone, as of course we'd been unable to track down blueprints of the originals. Only two of the door opening watches needed a detonator with an explosive device linked to it, the others would all be duds. Of course Kubota himself was one of the two wearing the explosive detonating watches. It was appropriate, almost karmic that he should be killed by a device of his own design.

The other detonator would be affixed to the third Cradle target, Nagisa Nijisaki, who had been the right hand man on the Nonary Game we'd been involved in. He'd taken the ideas put forward, and translated them into a system that worked smoothly. He was also, as far as we could work out, the one to arrange the initial experiments in the hospital in Japan to identify the targets.

Gentarou Hongou was our final target. This man was despicable; trash of the lowest sort. The Nonary Project was his idea, and he'd carried from birth to fruition. We knew, from Akane's visions, that he seemed to consider most human lives worthless, a tool for reaching an end. He would sacrifice anyone to help himself, and would ultimately be the man responsible for the deaths of the other three, even though we would lead him into that particular corner. He was also the only one of the four who would survive our game, if everything went according to plan. Akane was convinced that having to live with the guilt of killing his colleagues would be enough suffering for him. I wasn't so sure. From what I'd heard I didn't believe the man was capable of feeling guilt. Hopefully after we left the scene victorious he would face a just punishment. Nevada had the death penalty. Perhaps this was too good for him.

 

* * *

 

When it came to my secret idea for finding Light and Clover, that I wouldn't tell Akane, as I still hadn't told her about the dreams I was still having, of alternate times where she had died. I was hoping my dreams of alternate timelines would be helpful in tracking down Yamamoto, Light and Clover. If they could, it would be proof at last that they weren't just dreams. That they really were a vision of an alternate reality.

These dreams were normal for me now, and I had them two or three times a week. I had seen a variety of futures in my dreams, which had become easier to believe were real, as well as easy to cope with as alternate versions of myself had gotten past the worst of the grief involved in losing Akane. In the past year, among the many times I had seen, I had dreamt of those three many times.

It seemed the other me, in this particular alternate present, was seeking to reconnect with others who had been through the traumatic experience of the Nonary Game. Dream me had got back in contact with the detective, and asked him to track down the others who had been kidnapped. I had wanted someone to talk to. Someone who had been through it, and would understand. In particular I had dreamt of Light more and more often, a relationship which had grown more and more intimate as I got to know the man the boy I'd admired years ago had become.

In my waking hours I couldn't help but be a little envious of my dreaming self. He had reached peace, and was moving on with his life. He had goals and dreams of his own, had made friends and relationships that were not all tied toward the one goal that I myself was still preoccupied with. I wouldn't swap places with him though. He didn't have Akane, and I knew it had taken years of work to move on from that. It was silly to envy his current situation, all things considered, but sometimes it was difficult not too. After all, for nearly nine years now, almost everything I'd done was simply for the goal of saving her.

She was worth it of course.

  



	8. Eight Years, Six Months

We had told our neighbours that we were travelling to Japan, seeking to reconnect with family members we'd lost contact with as children, when our parents had moved to the States. They didn't seem to find it strange that most of our belongings had been packed up or sold off.

It felt a little like going home. Arriving at the airport and disembarking with the other passengers. Getting to use our native language skills; rusty with disuse since we'd long since stopped speaking Japanese between ourselves, except when we didn't want others to understand what we were saying.

We were booked into a hotel on the outskirts of Tokyo, and were hoping to find a more permanent place to stay within a week. Hotels were all very well, but were hardly private. Money was not a problem, as I had been successful beyond all my initial expectations of stock-holding, and the money was spread across several accounts, some easier to access than others. I was aware that some of the research we had done in the US had meant one of my fake accounts, under another false name, had been flagged by the police. Luckily, as we'd left the country under our longest standing fake identities, which had no suspicious activities associated with them, we hadn't had any problems getting through security on either end.

The bulk of our money was under the control of our company. I was more and more appreciative to have the semblance of a business with which to do larger money transfers and hiring resources and people to ensure our personal project ran smoothly. I would never have pictured myself as a businessman, but there you are. We were even renting office space, and would continue to do so while we were out of the country. It was a useful place to store stuff.

Of course, when we returned to the US in six months, we would be illegally taking nine drugged people with us. We would not be using a public plane, and I would have to arrange a private vehicle, one of which no questions would be asked, to take us back across the Pacific. I had already arranged where we would be touching down, having made a 'friend' at a small airfield just in the desert, who was happy to look the other way if and when we chose to land there, rather than searching us. We had forms to apply for permits to land there, though of course, the permits would be full of lies, as 'international kidnapping' was not something that looked good on any official document.

We were hoping to find an independent, international shipping company, who would let us load our 'packages' onto and off of the aircraft, without searching it. To do this we would need to somehow find a pre-existing group of international smugglers, pay them off copiously, and use their mechanism of transport. Or find a way of transporting them under the cover of a more reputable purpose. Akane was very tempted to see if we could used a plane requisitioned for transporting Cradle Pharmaceutical goods around the globe, but I didn't want to draw any unnecessary attention from them if we could help it.

If we worked efficiently enough, and greased the wheels with enough money, it would go smoothly. Of course, international smuggling would not be easy, so we needed to start work on making those connections as soon as possible.

The idea that we would effectively be human trafficking, made me deeply uneasy. I hoped that we wouldn't need to use actual human traffickers to help us with our kidnapping. Of course, if we did, we could made sure to draw police attention to them after the fact, so that they would be shut down. It was the only way I could remotely justify the idea.

Akane remained sanguine. She was sure everything would work out. I had to keep reminding her that yes, her visions strongly suggested our Nonary Game would run without police interference. But what about AFTER that? She had not seen that far. It was very likely we would spend the next several months on the run, or end up in police custody. And I did not want my baby sister going to jail. We had to be careful. It was almost as if she knew something else she wasn't telling me.

Well... there almost certainly was. She had several files on the go on her laptop that so far I had been unable to decrypt, and I'm pretty sure she'd been meeting with other people. I had my suspicions. Despite the amount of time we'd needed to dedicate to getting our Nonary Project ready, she had become fascinated with a secret organisation called 'Free the Soul', which apparently had some sort of link to Cradle Pharmaceuticals. I figured she must have encountered the name of the organisation while researching the company. I had refused to get involved with her side project. Saving her life was more important. AFTER I'd done that, then I'm sure whatever it was would be more interesting to me.

  


* * *

 

It soon became clear to us that the six month timetable we'd initially laid out for tracking people down and planning their abductions was not long enough to manage by ourselves.

I'd had a brilliant idea. But I had to convince Akane to let me do it.

“ We should ask Yamamoto,” I had said. He was one of the few people we'd successfully located so far, as he was still operating as a PI within the city.

“ If he knows we're tracking down people linked to the first Nonary Game, he'll figure out we're to blame when we're all in the warehouse together. And he must not find out I survived.”

“ He won't figure out it was us. He won't know you're alive ahead of time,” I'd insisted, confident in my plan. “Not any more than he already does. It's a good idea to see if your theory of the others forgetting the real version of events holds true anyway.”

Akane frowned, and I could see a long counter argument brewing in her mind. I opted to cut her off before she could begin.

“ Look, I have thought about this you know? Just listen.”

I laid out my thinking.

Firstly, we knew that we were already planning to give him a larger dose of Soporil than was quite necessary. We would have to do this to bring about the amnesia he claimed to be suffering from, and it was already on record as a proven side-effect of a mild overdose of the sleeping drug.

Secondly as the investigator working on the case originally, he would likely have a record of the names and addresses of everyone involved.

Thirdly, for the same reason, he would probably turn a blind eye to any suspicions he had about us inquiring into the Cradle bosses. He was probably as pissed off as the rest of us that they'd gone without justice being served to them. The brief impression I'd had of him in reality, and the glimpses in my dreams suggested to me that he was a tender hearted guy, despite the intimidating exterior, and would do what he could to help someone in need.

  


* * *

 

It seemed I had managed to convince Akane. She allowed me to send off an email, just mentioning who I was, and that I was looking to reconnect with some of the other Nonary game survivors now I was back in the country. I phrased it like that intentionally, and made no mention of Akane. I wanted his first email back to indicate which version of events he recalled.

His email back was supportive, he was happy to help me track down the others, even though he wasn't currently aware of their present locations, he had enough details that it wouldn't take too long. He made no mention of Akane whatsoever. Akane and I both agreed that he probably would have mentioned her, if he'd remember her surviving, and the absence of a reference to her probably meant he didn't want to bring up her death. This meant we would have to be extra careful not to give anything away.

We'd already decided to conduct as much of our discourse online as was possible, resorting to phone calls if need be, and trying hard to avoid face to face meetings. Him not seeing Akane went without saying, but it was nearly as important that he didn't see me either. The Soporil may cause amnesia, but seeing a familiar face could stimulate the return of his memories earlier than planned. Bearing that in mind we didn't want him to actually contact any of these individuals himself. I did not want the people we were kidnapping recognising him either.

The only individuals we were kidnapping who he had seen before were Light, who carried the highest risk of recognition both ways, and Hongou. Hongou's prosopagnosia would mean he would not recognise the detective he'd locked away on the ship years before.

We were hoping that as the Light Akane had seen her vision had made no mention of recognising the detective, the lack of recognition was the truth. Light was rather canny though, and if he was going to recognise Yamamoto, he would keep quiet about it. He certainly wouldn't have let on to Junpei if he had. He and his sister had apparently both done a pretty good job about keeping quiet about the first Nonary game, with just the sole threat we would make, though of course Light managed that much better than his sister, who would end up dropping a few needed hints to Junpei.

But the woman we would call Lotus had not recognised him. She seemed the type who would certainly have mentioned having seen him before, especially considering how much Akane claimed she had bickered with him. She hadn't trusted him, and would have exposed him if she had recognised him.

As such I had asked only for details on how to contact these people myself, that I wanted to speak to them, surprise them as it were, on my own time. He had eventually agreed, and promised to get back to me by the end of the week with an email on his progress, and weekly after than until he had completed the task. I would pay him after receiving the email. He had initially offered to help for free, but after discussing this with Akane we decided against it. He was self employed, and his time was valuable. And we were far better off than the poor orphan Aoi he would remember. It was well within our budget. We'd just have to pay him through a bank account that wasn't linked to Crash Keys, or to our most useful fake identities, to avoid him tracking us down after our Nonary Game.

I expected he would probably do a little research on me himself, but he wouldn't be able to find out much. 'Aoi Kurashiki' had pretty much stopped existing from a legal standpoint eight and a half years ago when I became Chris Kurosawa. And I hadn't given that name to him, and had set up a new dummy email account just for the purpose of speaking to him. I didn't think a PI would have the resources to track down information on me beyond that, and as a paying client and former acquaintance, he would probably be disinclined to.

He had been able to give us some information straight away. He confirmed that all the children reported missing following the Nonary game kidnapping game had been safely returned, a list which excluded myself and my 'poor sister' as we'd never been reported missing. He claimed that he felt bad that he'd allowed me to disappear, but that he understood why, and was pleased to hear from me now how well I was doing. More usefully he'd been able to tell us that the mother of Nona and Ennea was a woman named Hazuki Kashiwabara.

A quick search of that name online allowed us to find her public Facebook profile, and confirm she was the Lotus we were looking for. The woman was fiercely protective of her children's identities- no mention of them anywhere, but plenty of information on her own life and routine. With the information available to us there, she would be an easy target, once we received a more concrete confirmation of her location.

It seemed Light and Clover were more difficult for him to track down, as their parents had become justifiably paranoid after their first kidnapping, and had relocated, cutting ties with everyone, and minimising their online presence. Yamamoto was confident he'd get a lock on their location for me within our deadline.


	9. 8 years, 11 months, 27 days.

Everything came down to this. Everything else was ready. The replica of the Gigantic, and all the 'game' pieces were finished and just waiting for the players and a couple of pre-game checks. The plane that would take us to the airstrip in Nevada was sitting waiting for our arrival, set up ready with everything we would need to keep everyone unconscious but healthy while they were flown across the planet. The masks and robes Akane had arranged for us to wear were waiting in the van we'd acquired, which we were planning to use to move people after knocking them out.

Our first target was the detective, Yamamoto, who thought he was meeting with Aoi Kurashiki again at last. We weren't exactly lying to him. We had arranged to meet him in the car park below a hotel that we had claimed I was staying at. He was the largest of our targets, so the smaller the distance we had to move him to get him into our van the better.

He appeared in the car park on schedule, making his way from the stairwell to the specified rendezvous point in a more dimly lit corner. Akane drove the van out of the space it had been loitering in, and dropped a canister of aerosol Soporil out of the window as she passed him, turning sharply to cut off his forward escape route. I emerged from between two parked vehicles behind him, unrecognisable in the robes Akane had made and with the gas mask covering my face.

He turned quickly, as soon as he realised he was under attack, but stopped short when he saw me on his other side.

In the moments before the sleeping gas took hold I watched his expression flicker with a series of emotions. I could imagine what he was feeling: confusion, betrayal, fear. There was brief hint of what could have been recognition as his gaze shifted from the mask to the robe.

Before he collapsed, Akane slid back the side door of the van from within, and I was able to push him gently back on to the floor of the van, climb in after and pull the door shut behind me.

Akane had already pulled off her mask as she slid back into the front seat and drove us off. The whole thing had taken a mere thirty seconds, and had gone very smoothly with no witnesses, as well as out of sight of the car park's singular security camera.

She pulled the van over on a road a short distance from the hotel, and hopped into the back to help me move the detective onto the bench and strap him in.

Yamamoto had really been the best choice to take first. It had been easy, and he was the least likely to be reported missing due to his line of work and the few family ties he had. We'd also been able to take him close to the plane itself by arranging the meeting point, so we dropped him off there, moving him on a gurney into the plane and onto a bed. He was quickly hooked up to the line that would keep him unconscious but healthy for the next few days.

Akane and I both mumbled our apology before we set off again to take our next couple of targets.

 

* * *

 

Our next targets were the Fields. We had to sit and wait patiently out the back of the music shop Light and Clover were currently within. He was taking music lesson there, and Clover went with him every time. This was, perhaps unsurprisingly in keeping with the dreams I'd been having about the pair, though dream-Light had been pursuing a different instrument at a different venue. The information we'd tracked down about the pair had been more validating of my dreams than I had imagined. The pair usually left through the back door of the shop, which was a music store by day, but offered evening classes. The small area out the back had had a security camera, but we'd given a teenager ¥10,000 to smash it a few nights ago. The breakage had gone unreported to the police, and had not yet been repaired. In fact several broken pieces were still sitting on the ground.

All we had to do was wait for them to emerge.

As we sat, the expression of apparent recognition on Yamamoto's face came back to me. He couldn't possibly have recognised me, so there must have been something else he was familiar with, and I had a theory.

“I thought you said you'd made up the design on the 'Zero' robes yourself?” I asked, as the symbol Akane had put on the robe must have been what Yamamoto had recognised.

Akane looked abashed, as I squinted down at the strange insignia on my chest. It was certainly not something I had seen before.

“Akane… be honest with me. Yamamoto recognised it, so it must mean something.”

“It's the symbol of Free the Soul.” she took a breath, and then continued in an emphatic rush, clearly passionate about what she was saying. “They're a really awful group of people Aoi, I'm sure I've told you before, and they've been gaining power behind the scenes. I don't know as much about them as I'd like to, but I do know they were linked to Cradle at the time of kidnap. It just… it's just appropriate that if we _are_ spotted while we are doing this, that THEY are the ones suspected. I wasn't expecting Yamamoto to recognise it. The logo isn't well known at all, but perhaps he came across it when he was originally looking into our kidnappings.”

I said nothing. Her reasoning was justifiable, I was just worried that some of our other targets, such as the Cradle executives, would recognise it. Would that cause problems further down the road? It was too late to do anything significant about it now. We didn't have any other concealing outfits tucked away in the back of the van. Instead, I just took the black sharpie that had been sitting in the glove compartment, and coloured over the symbol pointedly.

Akane kept her eyes averted stubbornly and refused to take the pen when I offered it to her. I was about to start an argument with her over it, when we were interrupted by movement outside the van.

The door of the music shop had opened, and I slid into the back of the van as quietly as I could manage, and waited for Akane to shout. We needed to wait for them to emerge and the door to shut before we could gas them. We didn't need the proprietor of the store, or the music teacher to be aware of what was going on.

When the door clicked shut we moved quickly. My gas mask was already in place as I slid the door open and tossed out the Soporil grenades.

Perceiving the threat, Light was quick to put himself between the van and Clover and take up a defensive stance, displaying the same protective instincts that I had admired years before. It was in vain though as the gas quickly took hold and the pair collapsed to the floor.

They were much easier to manoeuvre than Yamamoto had been, and we soon had the pair secured in the van, having taken care not to dislodge Light's prosthetic limb.

“He's taller than I thought he' be,” Akane observed mildly as I strapped Light in before driving off.

I stayed silent. Light's face in his drugged sleep was serene, and just as beautiful as I had remembered it from my dreams. In fact everything about him was just as I remembered from my dreams, and I felt a bizarre pang of guilt, as if I were betraying someone very close to me.

But that relationship I had dreamt of wasn't real, at least not in this universe. This Light knew nothing of me beyond the boy he'd met nine years ago. I felt sad that I would not have a chance to form the bond we had in the other reality, but the bond I had with my sister was more important than any other; real or imagined.

Akane smiled at me, as if she could see what was going on inside my head. I hadn't talked to her about the dreams. At first because I didn't want her to worry, but more recently because I didn't want to tell her how the version of me that had lost her had managed to move on, and find a way to be happy. It was silly, and I knew she wouldn't be upset to find out I would have eventually been able to get over her death.

“I guess you still like him then. I am sorry you won't get to know him better.”

I forced myself to suppress the emotion. It wouldn't do have Akane feeling sorry for me.

“He did grow up nicely, why didn't you warn me?” I replied jokingly “His sister turned out pretty nicely too.” The tone sounded a little artificial to my own ears, and the grin on my face a little plasticky, but it must have been good enough as Akane dropped the subject. Well… she teased me about it as we went to drop the pair off at the plane, but no longer seemed to be pitying me. In truth her positivity cheered me up, and I was hoping I could tease her back when we picked up Junpei.

He was the next target on the list after the woman we would call Lotus.

 

* * *

 

We picked Lotus up on her way back from a dance class she attended once a week. She normally took a bus back from outside the building the class was in, and then had to walk a short distance through her estate before arriving back home. Her route included an alley that was not overlooked by any buildings, and was fairly poorly lit. I was a little surprised that anyone who walked alone at night would choose to travel down it, but she had lived in the area for a long time, and it was just part of her routine. Perhaps the alley had not seemed so threatening when she'd first started walking this way, or the neighbour had no history of violence.

She was easy to kidnap. She was not paranoid or even terribly alert to the threat as I entered the alley behind her, closing off her escape route. I clung to the shadows as she headed towards the other end.

Suddenly Akane pulled the van across the end of the alley and her head jerked up in surprise, that was when I threw out the cannisters. Seconds later, despite her pose indicating readiness to defend herself, she collapsed to the ground and was quickly stowed and strapped into the van. She hadn't shouted for help, and as far as I could tell, there were no witnesses.

 

* * *

 

Next was Junpei. He was the one I was the most wary about, other than the Cradle executives. This was because unlike everyone else we'd kidnapped so far, Akane's visions meant we knew we had to take him from his home, rather than pick out a place we were unlikely to meet trouble. This was the time we were most likely to be spotted, and have the police called on us by concerned neighbours.

This was the reason we had left him later than the others, who had been much easier to isolate from potential witnesses. The Cradle guys would be harder still, but we had a plan for that.

We parked at the rear of the building, which would limit how many people could possibly look out and see us hauling his unconscious body into a van. Getting into his apartment block turned out to be pretty easy; the door was a little damaged, and hadn't closed properly, and could be opened without typing in an access code, or needing someone within to grant us entry. If and when Junpei's disappearance was noted, the maintenance team would surely get into trouble over that, but for us it just made the job easier.

We knew Junpei wouldn't be home until after we had set up, so we entered the building carrying our robes and masks, sure we would look as if we were just friends coming to pay him a visit.

We managed to get into his apartment fairly easily too, the lock was easily picked. I felt bad for Junpei living somewhere that was apparently so insecure. Perhaps after all this was over he'd find somewhere safer to live.

Once inside, Akane opened a window and I locked the door behind us. We donned our robes and masks then waited with the lights off. I was tucked away behind the open bathroom door where I could watch, but Junpei wouldn't notice me, and Akane was standing where she could deploy the Soporil unnoticed as Junpei went to shut the window.

Knocking him out went as smoothly as planned, but getting him back out and into the van would be trickier as we'd have to carry him down the stairs without being noticed.

Luckily it was late enough that I imagined most of his neighbours would be asleep, and those that weren't would be unlikely to wander about this late. It was well past midnight, and I did wonder what Junpei had been out doing to be back so late. I was tempted to rifle through his pockets for clues, but I knew Akane wouldn't let me. Well… not yet, we would have to empty their pockets before placing them in their rooms on the Gigantic replica.

Instead I went out to glance around the hallway and staircase for signs of life, and after confirming no one was there, and that the rear car park was quiet too, I returned, and carried Junpei down the stairs and out to the van.

“Your boyfriend is heavier than he looks,” I complained teasingly to Akane, who laughed. Seemed I wasn't going to ruffle her feathers that way, though I did see her look somewhat longingly at Junpei's sleeping face as we strapped him into the back of the van beside Lotus. We'd had to wait for Junpei a little longer than anticipated, but we should still be on schedule to kidnap the Cradle executives as planned.

Lotus and Junpei were taken to the plane, and fastened in with the others. Five down, four to go. Just the Cradle guys left, and I was looking forward to kidnapping them rather more than I wanted to let on.

 

* * *

 

As our van loitered in an alley behind the hotel Cradle were hosting their annual patting-themselves-on-the-back party, I considered just how lucky we'd been.

Everyone had been within a short drive of our plane. Part of this had been good planning on our part, being able to find space at a private landing strip near enough to our targets. Part of it was that for the most part, our targets hadn't relocated far from the places they' been living nine years ago. Hazuki had still been in the same house (though her daughters no longer lived with her), and both Junpei, and the Light siblings had stayed near enough to their families. That the Cradle team were having this party in the city was complete luck. Or perhaps karma finally out to get them, by placing them in our path.

We were parked outside the catering entrance, though all but a ghost staff had left by this point.

The party itself had been winding down, and we'd watched as a trickle of smartly dressed people had passed by on their way home. None of the four we were interested in however. We knew from our research that all four were present, and were historically among the last to leave these events, helping close them down, and ensure all the staff hosting them were content with the state of the rooms and their own pay. It seemed they had been trying to develop a reputation for courtesy with other companies they dealt with, which knowing what I knew about their history, was a little sickening.

And apparently less than appreciated by the companies involved. It hadn't taken much bribery to acquire the uniform the caterers were wearing, and making our way into the building without question, even pushing the huge trolleys we had with us.

On reaching the floor where the party was we entered the hall, and began pretending to clear the buffet onto our trolleys.

The Cradle employees in the room paid us no mind, except to note that the party was clearly more than over, and to head out. Our disguise was very thin, just hair concealed under uniform caps, and a pair of fake glasses apiece. We didn't expect the executives to bother looking too closely, and Hongou of course, would not remember us even if he did.

I beckoned over the executives and acted out the scene Akane and I had scripted and rehearsed earlier; something about needing to amend Cradle's bill, as one of their employees had caused damage to the property on their way out of the building.

At the perceived threat of an increased bill, or a damaged reputation, the four executives flocked round to try and persuade me otherwise.

I pretended to reach for a pile of paperwork on the trolley, and Akane pressed a concealed switch on its handle. We were both able to quickly grab and secure gas masks, as the Soporil hissed out of the cannisters concealed beneath the trolley's cover, and the four Cradle guys looked alarmed, one reaching to call for security, before the four of them collapsed.

It was not an easy job, but we were eventually able to manoeuvre them onto the trolleys, and conceal them beneath the white sheets. Two full grown men per trolley, did not make them easy to haul back to the lift then wheel out onto the van, but together we managed it. Without attracting any suspicion even. Even with the trolleys, as catering staff we had our own kind of invisibility. I had to admit to Akane that her idea for taking them had worked rather well.

 

* * *

 

After that it was a simple matter of flying across to Nevada, whilst keeping everyone drugged but healthy, getting them from the plane to the warehouse, loading them all into their rooms, and ensuring the correct bracelets were secured to their wrists. Oh, and that the additional preparations we'd had to make for Musashidou and Kubota were in place. And that all the rooms were ready to go with no faults. But other than all that; pretty simple.

We set the flooding system to start in 6 hours, shortly after the time we'd calculated that Soporil would finally wear off everyone, and then secured ourselves in our room to get a few hours sleep, before the second Nonary Game was due to begin.

I had thought sleep would be hard, as I was full of anxiety about the events of the next few hours, about our chances of success, and the possibility Akane would perish despite all our efforts. I knew my part; what information I would have to share and when, as far as Akane could tell. In the end it was the sight of her own sleeping face, that allowed me to sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then, the entirety of 999 happens. Just the epilogue to go now.


	10. Epilogue: A new future.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to wrap this story up.

The game was over. Akane was alive. We had succeeded, and the resulting feeling was that the weight of the world had bee lifted from my shoulders.

I hadn't dreamt of an alternate reality since the game had ended, though I was still prone to occasional nightmares about both games. Akane and I were making plans for the future, now that we seemed safe from the police investigation for now.

As planned, the name of Crash Keys had gone unconnected to the deaths of the three men in the desert. There was very little to tie it back to us, and I guess the investigation hadn't got that far.

By the sound of it, the investigation had gone for the easiest answers. There had been few leads, so Hongou's confession to the events of nine years ago, and to the deaths of the three men on board the replica of the Gigantic had been enough to end the case with his arrest and conviction. Cradle itself had somehow managed to acquire the blame for this set of kidnappings on top of those of nine years before.

Hongou's confession was interesting. The game survivors had witnessed it first hand, but that wouldn't have been enough for a conviction, though it certainly looked bad. But it seemed that a dam had burst within him after his confession in the incinerator, and he couldn't keep his mouth closed. He seemed to flip between seeing himself as hero for getting away with it for so long, and seeing himself the victim, and his lack of success in the original game a crime. He'd apparently been surprised to receive neither adulation nor sympathy, though I expected most of that was an act. Hongou had proved himself a fairly competent actor right up until the end of the game.

 

* * *

  


We had left America for a while, having returned to Japan and re-assuming the identities we'd been living under to strengthen our alibis, before moving on again after a few weeks.

Crash Keys was now ready to take up a new mission, the one Akane had been preparing for in the background for a while, a lesser priority than the game, but always on her mind. Though I had not been bothered about her pet project for a while, with the game out of the way, I had run out of excuses. Akane had decided we needed to focus all our resources on investigating the mysterious 'Free the Soul' that were connected to the original games, and were very likely up to worse even now.

I, personally, had been keen to take a break from business, and investigating and plotting, at least for a little while. I had less reason to do so now, we had succeeded, and Akane had lived. I wanted to take some time to adjust to our new reality; the one where I didn't have to constantly worry about her fading out of existence. I also needed time to recover from the more nightmarish elements of the game we'd played.

I mean, yes, I had known we'd had to arrange the deaths of those three men, but knowing that fact and plotting it out turned out to be very different to seeing it played out first hand. Planting a bomb inside someone's body is completely different to seeing their gruesome corpses splattered all over the walls, floor and ceiling. That in particular was an image that would haunt me for a long time.

Akane did not seem so bothered. But she'd had nine years to get used to the image, having seen it all before through Junpei's eyes. I found it hard to understand how she'd seemed as well adjusted as she had for the past nine years, following the incident, having seen all that on top of the trauma of being kidnapped and nearly incinerated.

Despite being reminded of all we'd done every time I looked at her, Akane was still my sister. I would support her as best I could with her desire to investigate Free the Soul. As a result, we relocated Crash Keys to the other side of the United States, and I continued to support us financially with revenue from the stock market, though of course, with nothing as profitable as Cradle had been.

At my lowest points, I wondered if this was to be our entire future. Doing more or less the same thing I'd been doing for the last few years; playing the stock market and plotting revenge on the people behind the original Nonary Game. The thought was depressing. I had hoped Akane would want more than that, but it seemed her only desire was to stop the organisation from doing the terrible acts she imagined them capable of.

 

* * *

  


Time passed by, and Akane continued investigating. She discovered that Free the Soul had a leader; the self-styled 'Brother', who was apparently seeking to change the world for the 'better' following the death of his sibling. I had to sympathise with the guy for that, after all the trouble I'd gone to ensuring that I didn't lose mine.

That's where my sympathy ended however. The path he was taking to change the world was likely to lead to misery and suffering across the world; or at least that was how Akane put it to me. She didn't know exactly what they were planning, but following the money trail they'd left didn't look good.

They had channelled some money into a project revolving around a future mission to Mars. They were planning to run a simulation of the mission on Earth to test how future astronauts might react to the isolation, especially during the prolonged period of radio silence that would occur in a hypothetical future mission. They would be cutting off all contact between the 'Mars' base and 'Earth'.

And they were currently recruiting individuals to participate.

Despite my research, I still couldn't quite understand why they weren't using trained astronauts for this. Surely someone who had already been through the selection process and had received rigorous training to ensure they could cope with the isolation. I mean, between the US, Russian and European space programmes alone there must have been a few spare astronauts floating about. But apparently astronauts were too expensive to waste on this simulation, so they were taking a cheaper option. They were also hoping to get useful data on how more ordinary people coped with the isolation involved; for the long term goal of establishing a colony on Mars. It still seemed weird. I wondered privately if it was Free the Soul's involvement that had helped motivate this decision.

Neither Akane, not I could figure out what Free the Soul wanted to achieve by involving themselves with this project, but Akane was sure it was nothing good. She said that we might have to get involved, Maybe one of us would have to sign up for the project.

 

* * *

  


One day, while we were discussing what to do with regards to this, there had been a knock at the door of our office, that had changed everything for me.

A look at the live feed from the camera mounted above the door showed the petite form of a casually dressed, white haired girl with glasses, and a few bandaged scrapes on her face.

I didn't recognise her, and neither did Akane. The location of our office was not public knowledge, so we assumed she'd got lost and had really been on her way to another floor.

I left Akane and went to speak to the girl, show her where to go. But… it turned out she really was looking for us, and when she spoke I was momentarily stunned into silence.

“My name is Phi,” she said coolly, ignoring anything I’d tried to say. “I am looking for Akane Kurashiki. The world's future depends on it.”

I was so shocked, it was like my brain froze; completely unable to process what I'd just heard.

How could she possibly know who we were? We had abandoned those names years ago, and they had no ties to Crash Keys. My brain kickstarted into overdrive; thinking frantically, wondering how anyone could have made the connection. She must have seen something of my bafflement in my expression.

“I have met her once before; in the future. It is very important she hear what I have to say. I have good reason to think she will believe me. I know something similar has happened to her before.”

I wasn't sure how to respond to that, still unsure whether or not to believe her. It was one thing to accept a strange story from Akane, yet another to believe that of a complete stranger. And yet… there was something about her that made me want to accept what she was saying, so I let her into the office, and introduced her to Akane.

 

* * *

  


Her story was just as amazing as Akane's had been when I heard it nine years ago, but we had little choice but to believe it. She knew things about Akane, and about the Nonary Games that only we and very few others knew.

She has claimed to have recently played a Nonary Game herself. On the moon. A game developed by Akane herself, alongside a man named Sigma Klim. Much like the game we'd recently played, this game had been designed to bring about a change far in the past. The aim was to send the consciousnesses of Phi and Dr Klim back in time, so they, with their future knowledge could prevent a horrendous outbreak of a virus called Radical-6. She and Sigma, she explained were espers like Akane, but had the power to send their consciousnesses across time; to see different timelines resulting from different events. Their younger selves had used this power to win the game, in their future bodies; while the selves that should have been in those bodies were in the past, as she was now, at the Mars mission test site, trying to stop Free the Soul.

The story was complex in its retelling, and must have been more so to live it. Despite the seeming ridiculous notions of time-travelling consciousnesses, robots and being on the moon, we believed her. There was too much there that resonated with our own experiences. In particular, the way she described seeing other timelines made me remember my dreams. Yes; I definitely believed her.

And, in believing her we knew the next steps for Crash Keys. We knew what was going to happen at the Mars test site. We knew the consequences of doing nothing about it, or of trying and failing to stop Free the Soul releasing that virus. Crash Keys had to make sure the future that Phi had travelled from existed, that the Nonary Game on the moon, and all its participants were there. If we did not, there would be no Phi to travel back to speak to us, and no Phi and Sigma to attempt to prevent disaster at the Mars mission test site.

Once more we would have to fight for the future, and this time the stakes were far higher. We couldn't take this story to anyone else; very few would understand it, and no one but us would believe it. We did at least have some resources, and a starting point.

After a few hours, Phi left us to it. She said her consciousness was due to jump back again, as it was still another year before she would join us to be frozen and sent to the future.

There was a lot to do. There were three people to track down, excluding Phi who'd said she would come to us when it was time. There was the need to ensure the so called 'Cells-Alive System' could be safely used to freeze people. It was something Cradle had been funding before the company had collapsed; Crash Keys would have to adopt the abandoned project, fund it to completion, then acquire the pods for ourselves.

More disconcertingly… this time next year Crash Keys would have to kidnap three people.

And one of them was Clover.

We would have to separate Clover from her brother, and send her to the future via cryonics. Leaving Light behind to wonder why he had lost his ability to resonate with her in the morphogenetic field. He would have to assume she was dead. That he had failed to protect her.

Akane saw no problem with this, justifying it with 'If we are successful, and avert the outbreak of the virus, we won't have to send her to the future. We can open the box after the timeline splits following the success at the Mars test site. She will have played her part in the other timeline.'

I didn't feel good about that. The other timeline would still exist, and the Light in that timeline would still suffer the loss.

I made a decision. The most difficult decision I'd ever made.

I would help Akane get this new project going. But, after the kidnapping, when she was joined by the future Sigma Klim, she wouldn't need me any more.

I was going to leave her.

There was little point to me staying. Phi herself had said she there'd been no sign of me in the future.

I had committed enough crimes for my sister's sake. She was far too willing to hurt others in pursuit of her project, even if that project was the future safety of the world. I found her lack of hesitation disturbing. This was not the Akane I had known in childhood, the Akane who had been deeply upset by even the idea of hurting others.

I understood why these sacrifices needed to be made, and I would support her choices. But observing the manner in which Akane made them, I could not recognise my sister.

The things we had been through had changed her into someone new. And though I would never stop loving her, it was beginning to hurt to be with this changed version of her each day.

I had made my decision. I was going to leave. Then, as soon as I could, I was going to find Light. I was going to apologise, explain where his sister had gone, and hope he understood, and could forgive me. And then I was going to try to enjoy the rest of my life, however long it lasted, whether or not I was in the timeline with or without the viral outbreak.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thats that. Now to wait to see how much of this (the epilogue in particular), gets jossed when Zero Time Dilemma is released.
> 
> Comments or questions? Ask here or on my tumblr: http://imphiknight.tumblr.com/


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